People who write negative reviews on websites are often a retailer's most valuable and loyal customers, American research suggests.

 

Retail¹ specialists at MIT and Northwestern University found the harshest of critics may not have bought the product they were complaining about, but had strong feelings about a service or brand.

 

The study, which is the first to take an in-depth look at the behavior of customers who write negative reviews online, has disproved popular theories that peeved²（恼怒的） competitors or oddball customers make the harshest critics.

 

Professor Eric Anderson of Northwestern University and Professor Duncan Simester of MIT, examined over 325,000 online reviews written by customers of a large clothing company and examined more than 7,219 book reviews on Amazon.com to produce their study, ABC News reported.

 

They used data collected by the websites that made it possible to match reviews to purchases made.

 

The experts concluded that a firm's most loyal customers are also their most negative reviewers, or to quote a French maxim³, 'your best friends are also your harshest critics.'

 

Professor Anderson said that no-one had previously⁴ looked at the behavior of individual reviewers before and when they told the clothing company they were receiving negative reviews from their best customers, they were shocked.

 

They also revealed that the harshest critics had not bought the product they were complaining about and around five percent of product reviews were written by people who had not bought the item they disliked so much.

 

The researchers found that these reviews were also on average much more negative than the 95 percent of genuine reviews by customers who had purchased a product.

 

After much hypothesising, the marketing⁵ experts concluded that reviewers were acting⁶ like 'self-appointed brand managers' who like the company and continue buying from it despite penning a venomous（恶毒的） review.

 

They found that critics were often complaining about a new product that is slightly different from a company's core offering and want to tell a company if they suspect it is making a bad decision.

 

Professor Simester believes that customers feel the need to lie about buying a product to review it as they are looking for credibility.

 

He told ABC News that many people underestimate the importance of their reviews, which can have a harmful effect on a company's sales.

 

He thinks the findings of the research might prompt companies to insist that reviewers have bought a specific product first before giving their opinion on it.

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