As Samsung reported shipping over 600,000 units the first month after introduction, Galaxy Tab customers started to publish reports of their experiences with this exciting product on the online customer review sites and other social media venues. Not surprisingly many of them compare it to Apple iPod tablets.

A new study of 1,142 customer reviews available online, revealed that both tablets Customer Satisfaction exceeds customer expectations  by 17% and 15% respectively, which is well within margin of error. Both products fall short of customer expectations when it comes to Price/Value, however Galaxy Tab customers seem to think it offers better value and prefer its smaller size.

Galaxy Tab buyers are citing Android open platform and availability of Flash as critical reason for their purchasing decision, however Samsung and/or carriers poor customer support of this tablet may cause it fail to its claim of becoming an “iPad killer”.

Analysis Methodology: For this study we aggregated consumer-generated reviews published through November 26, 2010 on multiple popular public sites. This data was analyzed with our proprietary Opinion Miner software. The complete data set of competitive products, services and brands selected by Amplified Analytics’ customers is collected, monitored for updates, processed and analyzed through a paid arrangement. Source Data and attributes analysis for each model is available by request at info@amplifiedanalytics.com

Many marketers are wrestling with practical implications of Social Media Marketing concept. One of the challenges is a lack of a clear and practical concept definition. Everyone seem to know what it means and doing “something” about it, but only very few can boast a provable and measurable success. I chose to focus on a specific subset of the SMM that in my opinion provides the most effective method on increasing sales without monumental budget requirements.

If you agree that consumers, and that include businesses in context of this conversation, fundamentally shop for “desirable outcome” and a shopping process is focused on risk reduction of achieving that outcome, you would probably see why the customer reviews are so important. Many marketers are often uncomfortable with an idea of funding a messaging effort without retaining control of the content, but that is precisely why this Media is called Social.  A customer review is usually a personal “story” describing how a person, who had expectations (possibly similar to yours) experienced reality of of their decision to purchase that product or service. A “negative” review can often sell your product or service more effectively by alleviating prospective customer’s fears because the review writer expectations were different from the the reader’s, the writer’s experience was closer to the reader’s desirable outcome, and negative tone gives the story a lot more credibility.

Let’s assume that I masterfully convinced you that customer reviews, under curtain conditions, provide sizable uplift in sales. If you don’t buy this line of reasoning there is some research on that subjects which supports the premise. You can find here and here. If you knew it all along, you are more interested in what are the “certain conditions”, and how exactly do you get your customers to write these reviews.

Humans communicate by telling the stories – stars (Liekert scales and such), attribute ratings and any other attempts to filter and organize customer reviews, are helpful, but they often fail to produce sales uplift if used excessively. They distract consumers from reading the “stories” and prevent them from personal engagement. The idea of engaging customers in writing more reviews by offering them “fill in the blank” forms often leads to waste and distrust as consumers, who look for this product reviews, feel cheated when they land on the product page with  pre-fabricated, check box reviews.

Number of reviews is critically important for production of sales uplift. There is no exact, magic number that would guarantee the desired effect as it is highly contextual to the complexity of the product or service and its price (i.e. risk involved). Too few reviews for a product may make it look not credible to many consumers, and too many reviews may intimidate some from even making the decision. The latter case could possibly be mitigated by thoughtful “filtering” mechanisms and it is not a problem for most marketers. Only a very small number of customers are engaged enough to write a review. I “mashed” TV units shipped data from iSuppli Market Research with a number of reviews for these TV brands available online to come with an average that is well below 1%.

Engaging your customers to write more reviews is probably the most challenging task. There is no shortcuts here. Any marketers who succumbed to a “brilliant” idea of planting reviews written by not-customers should know that it is illegal ( it was successfully prosecuted in NY),  it produce adverse effects, and did I mention that it is not ethical? Misleading social media seeding techniques have become so widespread that the European Union enacted Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations to protect the public from the most deceitful activities.

To do it right you need to understand why customers write the reviews on the first place. What are the motivations? There are a few studies conducted by Cone Research and others that delved into this subject. When you understand what motivates very few of your customers to write the reviews you need to select appropriate existing interaction points between your company and a customer, such as warranty registration process or scheduled maintenance, to ask them for it. The way you communicate the request is very important and has to loop back to the motivations. If you ask for endorsement or referral – you miss the mark and fail in this Social Media Marketing class.

As of this date Piplzchoice Award research is read by 15,126 people. In this study we analyzed Mobile Phones. We are currently tracking 98 products in these categories and analyzed 7,529 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Blackberry Torch 9800 is a newcomer that quickly captured the top spot for it’s Functionality and Reliability reputation.

RIM Blackberry Torch 9800
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
59% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

This Phone’ Reliability score is 42% higher than the category average. See mobile phone brands analysis study below. For the free full copy of this study contact greg@amplifiedanalytics.com

Mobile Phone Brands Analysis

We keep working on new methodologies for measuring impact of Word of Mouth on Brand equity. Only a few quarters ago CE manufacturers named their laptops and netbooks as two very separate categories of products, however after release of iPad this distinction started to melt away. This is the analysis of 25,4169 customer reviews of 232 laptop and netbook computers from 9 brands. The measurements represent difference between customer expectations and customer experiences using 2 point scale

The assessment was administered on reviews published before September 28, 2010. The chart below represents Customer Satisfaction Indexes for these brands.

• As all brands display a very close, above 1, mean value which makes it safe to conclude that most customers had their expectations exceeded.
• All brands have “negative” outliers, but their number is small
• Samsung emerges as a leader with a large majority of it’s customers are highly positive about their experience – 50% are very concentrated at higher than average values
• Acer and Apple display a “long tail” of disappointed customers, while Sony has the weakest brand satisfaction ratings.

Let me know if you want to see the results for Functionality, Reliability and Support reputation analysis and I will email it to you.

At the foundation of our products is Opinion Miner software © that uses self-training algorithms to discern, amplify and measure raw data to produce structured information and metrics – signals out of noise. We began by using customer reviews about consumer electronics products because we had so much “ore” to work with. No other category of products (I don’t view books and movies as products) seem to be blessed with such an active customer following.  We also wanted to concentrate on generating actionable signals, that I imagine excludes mining opinions about brands – as a brand reputation is aggregation of what customers experience with products that are associated with the brand.  Here is one example of results we managed to produce so far

WOM (Word of Mouth) Analysis of HP Photo Smart Printer

I believe such information can really help marketing dollars work much smarter by

• focusing promotional resources on the products that win customer advocacy because it grows your business;
• learn why consumers chose your competitor’s product over yours and make changes;
• sync marketing message with what your customers value the most – not what your product managers think is cool.

So now, after sharpening Opinion Miner’s © “teeth” on plentiful customer reviews of CE and Computer products we would like to start experimenting on different type of WOM, like restaurant reviews or reputation of specific services.  Any ideas or suggestions from you, private or public would be greatly appreciated.

This time we analyzed electric blowers in Power Tools and Home Improvements category. As of this date we are tracking 304 products and analyzed 18,906 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Weed Eater WEB160 7.5 amp 160 mph Electric Blower

2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
24.1% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category

The winners are chosen by their customers

Please see below a list of runner ups

I was reading a post by Bruce Temkin about power of the VOC (Voice of Customer)

It turns out that more than half of the large companies had a formal VoC program in place. And when we asked about the results, the data was amazing — 83% of companies reported that they had positive results from those efforts.

I am surprised and encouraged that large companies are so interested and invested in this large and not very clearly defined area of a Customer Experience Management. Mostly I am surprised to learn that these companies claim they are actually act on their findings. I am not challenging Bruce’s findings, I just would like to see it as a consumer more often.

Meanwhile I would like to muse on one of my favorite subject – how to make your customers to market your products – i.e. Word of Mouth Marketing.  The WOM became an important part of VOC enterprise strategy as social media enabled consumers to become much more influential than we used to be. However WOM is the original form of advertising and it played an important role in every day life on issues of much more importance than selection of a product purchase or store preference for millennium. People have, and still do, share information about our experiences with each other across dinner tables, camp fires or customer reviews websites because WOM is much more relevant to an individual needs, concerns or desires than a broad advertising messaging addressed to the market place. Marketers try to improve relevancy of the advertising through segmentation, but their assumptions and biases limit effectiveness of their messages, while WOM is ultimately more effective as its recipients control the message they decide to accept or trust, and then reinforce it by sharing their own experience.

I would like to quote a LinkedIn discussion tread here:

People decide intellectually but buy emotionally. Selling based on features and benefits won’t close the sale for the customer, but emotional messages from WOM (“This product is great because it met this need for me”) will do it. All people make decisions intellectually but will buy emotionally – particularly if the purchase resolves a ” pain “for them as recommended WOM

37 years of being in the brand building business has made me realise that the CONSUMER IS THE MEDIUM. Sumit Roy

Here are few more quotes from the same conversation

1- CONSUMER is MEDIUM – implies there are great opportunities to tap into for better and faster business results. The medium, which is in the process of being discovered and integrated into strategies and business models.

2- WOM is AMPLIFIER, i.e. ADs x WOM – implies that WOM can be that multiplier improving the result beyond your “traditional” mediums diminishing returns curve. In fact, WOM is the enabler to make that curve steeper (you get more with every additional dollar invested) and higher (you can enjoy that for longer than usual).

However this is my favorite – “Trust is what helps social intercourse breed healthy brands”. My deepest thanks to everyone who contributed to that discussion.

This time we analyzed Computer Monitors. As of this date we are tracking 159 products in Monitors and LCD categories and analyzed 9,471 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Acer Computers seem to “own” this category as the three most popular products carry the company’s name.

Acer ET.BV3RP.001 17-inch LCD Monitor
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
26.4% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

This Monitor’ Reliability score is 4.1% higher than the category average.

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Computers & Accessories > Monitors” and “Computers & Accessories > Monitors > LCD” in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Reporter on this site.

Below is a complete list of qualified Computer Monitors

The product reputation metrics are measured by 2 point scale    .