How to Make Online Reviews Work for You

This article delves into the reviewsphere, and in particular the review site, Yelp. Based on the authors' studies of this and other such platforms, they build up a picture of who online reviewers are and what motivates them to write. They observe certain status-seeking behavior on the part of some online reviewers -- people who desire an audience, a readership, a public. This represents an emergent property of consumer behavior in an online world, and one that is bound to become more pervasive. As such, businesses need to find ways to engage with this new breed of not-so-ordinary consumer. Armed with this understanding of how the reviewsphere works, businesses will be in a much better position not only to engage with these sites, but to reap the benefits of what is undoubtedly a growing global phenomenon that is here to stay.