On the face of it, Amazon 4-star is an innovative physical retail store that will save customers time, help them to discover products and make better purchase decisions. An official blog post says that the average rating of all products in Amazon 4-star is 4.4 stars. That sounds impressive, except for two critical issues that plague all online star ratings systems: "reputation inflation" and fake reviews. The other question, in an era of fake news, is which ratings are actually fake reviews? So while the new Amazon 4-star format is undoubtedly interesting, is it based on a ratings system that may be becoming outmoded?

Source: Forbes October 01, 2018 02:37 UTC