Using customer reviews

Customer reviews, like on Amazon, is a fantastic invention. It is one of the things that permit the overwhelming diversity in today's culture (due to digital production and distribution) from being a blessing more than a curse.

But you have to learn how to use them, and how they work. See for instance these reviews on two different sites. Could the average rating be more different?

I think the difference here is a variant of a parameter I have found to be very important: to what degree has the audience reviewing the film/book deliberately searched for it before buying/renting it? I suspect that the renters on UK LoveFilm here found the film by accident and tried it out. And the reviewers on Amazon.com were people who were deliberately looking for movies with the female lead, and so they liked it. And you do in fact find evidence to support this if you take the time to read the reviews rather than just the star ratings.

I find that big-bucks movies which are pretty much forced in your face, Mission Impossible type movies, tend to get relatively lower ratings compared to quality, than more rare movies, especially old ones. Because the only people who buy and so review the rare movies are those who love a specific genre or actor, and so rate it higher.

Before I learned that I was woefully disappointed a few times, for instance when I tried out the horror/slasher genre based on stellar reviews some old films got. It turned out they were dreadful, but only slasher-film-lovers wrote those reviews. Caveat emptor!