It’s well known that online reviews are highly influential in the purchasing process.  New research from Ohio State University highlights just how quickly their influence emerges.

The research found that the first few reviews are often enough to influence the long-term ratings for a restaurant.

“These online platforms advertise themselves as being unbiased, but we found that that is not the case,” the researchers say.  “The way these platforms work, popular restaurants get even more popular, and restaurants with some initial low ratings can stagnate.”

Restaurant ratings

The researchers evaluated the ratings of some 3,000 restaurants from both Yelp and Tripadvisor in Franklin County, Ohio, which is home to more than the headquarters of over 20 restaurant chains.  It’s been widely believed that what consumers prefer in the area is representative of tastes across the United States.

Each of the reviews was assessed for both its rating and also the geographic location of the review, which was then used to assess the demographics of that neighborhood, and specifically the socioeconomic profile of the area.  The analysis revealed that those restaurants with a smaller number of reviews were more likely to have a low rating overall.

“The more reviews a restaurant received, the higher the average rating of the restaurant,” the researchers explain. “But this has implications: If one of the first reviews a restaurant receives comes from a dissatisfied customer, and people check that later and think ‘I don’t want to go there’ based on that one review, then there will be fewer reviews of that restaurant.”

Popularity breeds success

The reverse was true for restaurants with positive reviews, which were more likely to have a large number of reviews, which in turn becomes self-perpetuating, pushing the ratings for the restaurant ever higher.

The data revealed, for instance, that 17.6% of restaurants with only a few reviews received a low rating, with this decreasing to 9.3% for between 5-10 reviews on Yelp, with this trend even more pronounced on Tripadvisor.

There also appeared to be a role for the prosperity of a neighborhood, with many of the restaurants in poorer districts not having any ratings on the two sites, although there didn’t appear to be a direct link between either the racial or socioeconomic makeup and the average rating of restaurants in those neighborhoods.

The researchers believe their findings highlight how influential online reviews are for the long-term success or failure of a restaurant, and argue that this perhaps indicates a need for the review platforms themselves to try and make the playing field a bit fairer.

“Maybe these online platforms can withhold reviews until a restaurant gets a certain number of reviews – say, 10 or more,” he said. “That way if there are two or three customers who are very dissatisfied with a particular experience, they are not directing the restaurant’s success or failure.”