Here are some static examples (screen-shots) of customer feedback analysis for E-Readers and Tablets. The reason I mixed them together is because I have found that customers often investigate one before they purchase another. It appears that this category “divide” is largely historic and the two may eventually merge into one, just like laptops and notebooks have done.
This is the result of automated analysis of customer reviews published online. Opinions are measured on the scale from “0″ (unacceptable) to “2″ (delighted), with “1″ indicating satisfaction (expectation=experience). The importance is expressed by the line across bars and measured by a weighted average of total number of opinions about specific attribute of a specific product.
List of Attributes is extracted from customer’s conversations, not preconceived by any individual.
The dashboard controls allows a user to select and filter subsets of data for more targeted analysis. Below is an example of one-to-one comparison between Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook Color
Further “drilling” into the 5 (for example) most “important” to the E-Readers customers attributes may be achieved by selecting these attributes at the top left list of Attributes. The screen-shot below reveals that while both e-readers exceed their customers Usability expectations by a wide margin, Amazon holds 3% lead over the Nook Color which is within margin of error (+/- 7.2%). However its Reliability (second most important attribute) is 12% higher than Amazon Kindle. Both e-readers offer their customers a very good value exceeding their expectation by a wide margin, but the Nook pulls ahead again when it comes to Quality of Display.
I am getting ready to buy one, but buying one is just a beginning of the experience. The trick is to select the DMR that will give me more joy than a headache. Somebody said that there are 3 kinds of people:
1. people who learn from other people mistakes
2. people who learn from their own ones, and
3. people who never learn.
Let’s try to be the first kind of people and learn from others about their DMR experiences.
Let’s start with filtering the DMRs that have most customer reviews available on Social Media venues as there is a safety in numbers. I am not saying “Eat shit – 5,000,000 flies can’t be wrong!”, but there is a value in statistically representative information and it is much more difficult to plant a large number of reasonably descriptive customer reviews – just ask the Idiot Marketers who tried and got caught.
Comparing the “stars” of these receivers does not reveal much
as all of them sport 3.5-4 stars forcing me to sift through hundreds of reviews to decipher which one would give me the most satisfaction with the least risk and headache. This problem provided motivation for development of Opinion Miner® software and applications that are using it to produce the following score card.
The green shadowed cells indicate the highest score for an attribute and the red one highlight customer disappointment.
This makes my selection much easier as I can see that Roku XD delighted their customers with most of the attributes important to them. More than any other receiver we considered. However I also have information to make this decision personal, not just following the math – I do not buy from a company that disappoints their customers with Customer Support that makes…..
Drum rolls please!
The winner of 2010 Piplzchoice Award in the Digital Receiver Category is Apple TV 2010
I have written and published reviews online about books and products for over 10 years. Primary motivation for doing it is to share my experience with other consumers to help them make a choice, and with manufacturers to learn about customer experience with their product. I know that only a tiny number of consumers find it important to write the reviews as on the average well under 1% of a product customers review them, but my motivation is the same as most reviewer’s:
Sounds like a truly win-win proposition until dishonest, idiot marketers come with “brilliant” idea to manipulate customer’s feedback. We will never know what financial impact was experienced by Belkin after their reviews manipulating scheme was publicly revealed, but the brand reputation stain keeps lingering years after it became public. Just Google “Belkin reviews scandal”
Belkin became a “poster child”, but it surely is not the only perpetrator of public trust. There is a long list of slimy morons who figured out it is easier to brake the law (yes, it is illegal) than to produce really good product the customers would be inspired to write about. I can’t imagine that economic value of results produced using cheap manipulation can possibly justify the legal and financial risk involved, yet in spite of all scandals and successful legal proceedings the practice continues, and cheap labor providing sites are flooded with ads like this
I don’t want to single out travel industry, but hotels seem to be the worst offenders as these ads are running for years
All of these activities are unethical and illegal, practiced openly through Social Media channels and yet did not destroy public trust in value of Customer Reviews.
Are consumers dumb and unaware of chicanery or is it a testament to human resiliency and faith? My bet is on the second and we will continue to work on development of algorithms to help us minimize influence of the disingenuous product reviews.
Richmond, CA December 7, 2010. Amplified Analytics, the leader in analyzing customer word of mouth information, announced today release of its pre-holiday analysis of customer reviews of competing smart phones. The study shows Research In Motion’s new Blackberry Torch pulling ahead of Apple’s iPhone 4 in meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
“Today when consumers look for information on what products to buy, their most trusted information source is other consumers,” said Gregory Yankelovich, CEO of Amplified Analytics. “For this study, we used our software to analyze more than 14,000 customer reviews of 108 mobile phone models.” The complete study is available free of charge on request at http://www.tiny9.com/u/Contact_Us. For detail analysis of the smart phone models contact us at http://www.tiny9.com/u/WOM_Analysis.
The results of the study show that Blackberry phones exceeded customer expectations 8% more often than Apple iPhones. The Blackberry 9800 Torch now has a significant lead in the perception of Reliability and Customer Support. However, the Apple iPhone 4 (32GB model) does still sustain its lead in the categories of screen quality, design and software stability.”
The data was analyzed by Amplified Analytics’ proprietary software, Opinion Miner®. This software quantifies the customer reactions to the products and measures whether or not those products satisfy the expectations of the consumer. Because Opinion Miner® automates collection and analysis of consumer reviews, it can provide results based on near real time data. The current study includes consumer-generated reviews published through December 5, 2010 from a variety of publicly available sources. The methodology built into Opinion Miner® also reduces the chance of error in data collection and analysis.
Today’s results will help consumers choose the right smart phones for holiday gifts. However Yankelovich says that manufacturers can draw a broader lesson from this type of analysis. Analysis of consumer reviews these allow companies to understand why consumers choose their products, or a competitor.
“The sheer volume of reviews being posted and read shows that consumers’ most trusted source of accurate product information is each other. Manufacturers therefore also need to tap into this data in order to make their products more appealing.”
About Amplified Analytics: Amplified Analytics turns consumer data into business insight. Amplified Analytics takes the true vision of the customer reviews, call in transcripts, e-mail and chat room feedback and gives the business community a clear view of the playing field.
