Infoteilhabe
Consumer participation through review platforms? Everything is possible by tweaking a few parameters!
Completed research project, funded by the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV). Review platforms are extremely important when it comes to consumer decisions. At the same time, they are key success factors for online retailers. However, it is currently more than easy for retailers to manipulate overall rating results. Reviews are also predominantly posted when customers are very enthusiastic and somewhat less frequently when their expectations have been disappointed. On the other hand, hardly any posts are made for "average experiences". This leads to a distorted overall assessment of customer perceptions. The research report prepared by vunk Hochschule Pforzheim analyzes the legal, behavioral, and socio-economic background of consumers' participation on rating platforms. Besides exploring the drivers and barriers of participation in rating platforms, extensive research was carried out to determine which aspects need to be addressed in order to turn rating platforms into effective instruments to improve consumer participation and to enable NGOs to use these platforms as a powerful vehicle for shaping community sentiment.
Contributors to the project: Prof. Dr. Tobias Brönneke/Patrik Schmidt LL.M. (law, lead), Prof. Dr. Gabi Naderer (market and opinion research/consumer psychology), Prof. Dr. Hanno Beck (economics), Prof. Dr. Thomas Cleff (business administration/quantitative methods)
As part of the project, we are working with the following practice partners in particular:
- Federal Cartel Office
- Stiftung Warentest
- Trusted Shops GmbH
- Federation of German Consumer Organizations
Here you can find the summarized results of the project Infoteilhabe:
Summary of the main results of the research project in German
Summary of the main results of the research project in German (short version)
It is planned to publish the comprehensive overall report in three parts in the vunk publication series.
