Product reviews have been commonplace in magazines, newspapers, on TV, etc. With the increased popularity of the Internet, everyone seems to write reviews on varying topics from products to movies. I’ve even written a review. With all these reviews out there, is there any value to them? That’s, of course, a matter of opinion. Each reviewer has a bias, knows certain facts, has likes and dislikes, and maybe even an axe or two to grind. When I buy things, I typically read a lot of reviews that are all across the board; someone may not like a company because an employee was mean to them, or they could have had a bad experience with a piece of software (one that may only have happened on their machine), or on the other side, the reviewer may have met the author of a piece of software personally and felt a connection.
Years ago (about 10), one of my products was put head to head against a competing product. Both products were decent and the reviewer indicated the strengths and weaknesses of both. In the end, the reviewer said that they were evenly matched; however, the reviewer said this because a feature that my product had, the other product lacked, but the company that made the competing product promised it in a future update. This update never materialized and the reviewer, in my opinion, did a disservice to his readers by reviewing a promise and not what a customer could actually purchase and use. I’m still a bit bitter about this and makes me think even more about reviews I read. Reviews give me an idea of what other people think, but that really doesn’t help me. I need to form my own opinions of a product.
Movie reviews are extremely common and I sometimes glance at them before seeing a movie. My wife and I like the same types of movies, usually action/mystery or comedy (she has a wider range of movie likes than me that includes romance), so we see action movies more than any other type of movie (we don’t watch movies all that often). Before we went to see Firewall, I had looked at the reviews. It got pretty mediocre reviews at best. We both enjoyed the movie. It might not have all the things that Ebert and Roeper think make a great movie, but to us, it was worth the time and money to see the movie (TIP: Costco sells movie tickets for AMC Theatres; 2 for $15 which saves up to $2.50 per ticket).
In another case, I’ve seen reviews of products where the reviewer gave it bad marks because it didn’t do exactly what he wanted it to do; the product never said it would do it, but that didn’t matter.
Product reviews, from software to video cameras, to books to movies won’t be going away anytime soon, but I’d hope that people form their own opinions and don’t just make a buy/watch decision based on what someone else believes.