I'm not even sure that Amazon really benefits from this.
I have become super wary to buy things from Amazon even with good reviews, because I am suspicious the reviews are fake.
I have become super wary to buy things from Amazon even with good reviews, because I am suspicious the reviews are fake.
It's an easy problem to solve too... only allow reviews from people who have purchased the product on amazon. Nearly every other major e-commerce site does that. The fact that amazon hasn't required this is a good sign that they don't think that is the most beneficial thing to them. Their system already has this feature, but most sellers don't enable it.
If someone literally reviews over 90% of what they order on Amazon, they're probably paid for it. If someone only buys things via external links, they're probably paid for it.
There's lots that Amazon can do. Hell, putting seller stickers on co-inventory to track the counterfeiters would be a nice start.
Great idea! They'd still have the benefits of mixing inventory but then you can track who is putting fakes in the bin.
It could be that products with fake positive reviews sell better individually but the presence of fake reviews in general reduces sales overall. But the former is really easy to measure and the latter is much harder.