Although only a small percentage of consumers post online reviews, buyers rely on them heavily when making purchasing decisions. Face it, Pandas: you probably wouldn't buy an item that only has a single review, even if it were glowing. And you're not alone: the availability and content of reviews greatly impact consumer behavior. In fact, 96% of shoppers say they read Amazon reviews before buying something.
In fact, reviews are sometimes more impactful than brand loyalty, as 79% of buyers trust reviews more than brands they have bought from before. According to a 2025 Amazon consumer report by Remazing and Appinio, review quality is the third most important element of a buying decision. For 91% of Amazon shoppers, review quality comes first when shopping, and only prices (95%) and product descriptions (92%) matter more.
Interestingly, jokey reviews don't deter buyers. On the contrary: sometimes, ridiculous reviews can bring in more future shoppers. In 2024, two professors at the Temple Fox School of Business, Sunil Wattal and Susan Mudambi, set out to explore what kind of impact "pseudo reviews" on Amazon have on buyers. They were inspired by such viral products like the once-viral banana slicer and its top comment: "For decades I have been trying to come up with an ideal way to slice a banana."
They had 250 participants read all sorts of reviews: ridiculous ones, honest ones, and negative and positive ones. What they found was that pseudo-reviews can either increase or decrease sales, depending on the context. A negative review where a person really meant what they wrote dissuaded shoppers from buying. However, a jokey negative review had the opposite effect – people were tempted to buy those products just for laughs.
Both professors caution buyers not to take things at face value. Sometimes, people just want to joke around, and they exercise their funny bone muscles in the Amazon review section. Mudambi has two ideas about what drives people to write funny reviews: "They're trying to make a name for themselves. Or else they just have way too much time on their hands."
"If you're looking for some benign humor, online reviews are a good place to go. But don't take yourself or the products or the reviews too seriously," Mudambi also added. Her colleague Wattal also sees the bright side of funny reviews: "If you're looking for a gift for your friend and something is viral with all these fake reviews, you might as well buy that."
#13 I Checked Out The Reviews For A Dress I Was Going To Buy. I Didn’t Expect This!
How can you tell that a review is genuine? Some of the jokes might go over your head and the review author's sarcasm doesn't always translate into print. In 2015, linguists studied 750 Amazon reviews and tried to spot the satirical ones. Interestingly, the researchers couldn't always determine whether the review was genuine or satirical. They did, however, classify 71.1% of the reviews correctly as satirical. "Linguistically, satirical texts are more specific, less lexically sophisticated, and contain more words associated with negative emotions and certainty than non-satirical texts," the researchers concluded.
There is another kind of fake review on Amazon – the real fake kind. While it's hard to estimate just how many, experts caution that many glowing reviews we see aren't actually genuine. In 2021, the UK consumer group Which? found that there were dedicated websites offering to sell fake reviews on Amazon Marketplace for £5 each.
Which? uncovered a scheme that offered "packages" for sellers: individual packages that cost £15 and bulk packages from £620 for 5 and up to £8,000 for 1,000. In April 2025, the UK banned fake reviews as part of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act of 2024.
