Most of society often purchases things online, from electronics to cleaning supplies, and customer reviews can be beneficial when making decisions.
Consumer reviews “are believed to be more reliable than, example, a corporate advertising,” says Katie Lafreniere, assistant professor at the University of Alberta School of Business.
A recent study by Lafreniere and her associates found that adding a few curse words can increase the importance of those reviews.
“The amount of helpful votes that a review received rose when foul language was present in the review.”
On Yelp and Amazon, more than 300,000 product reviews were examined by Lafreniere and his team.
While a descriptive evaluation for a dishwasher would have said “cycles function as expected, layout is OK,” the research indicated that “this dishwasher is damn silent” was regarded as more helpful and sold the product better.
The group discovered that swearing is particularly effective as a technique for communication and improved the reliability of the reviews.
Robert Tryon is participating. He calls himself the head seafood guy at St. Albert’s Effing Seafoods.
Starting out on Vancouver Island, Tryon made a name for himself by harvesting oysters from the Effingham Inlet.
Tryon said, “With oyster names, it usually originates from the geographical area.
“In order to do that, I grew the Effingham oyster, which I called the Effing Oyster.
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Tryon claims that while making purchases online, particularly when making travel reservations, he personally reads reviews.
He has also come to understand the importance of industry comments.
Tryon remarked, “We collaborate with many fantastic restaurants all across the city, and I see how some of their reviews impact their company.
The U of A study did not include any marketing initiatives; it just examined consumer feedback. According to Lafreniere, the influence of profanity does not extend to businesses utilising such language.
She did, however, note that when it comes to reviews, no sector is immune to the advantages of coarse language.
Like baby items, swear words continued to have a positive and significant impact.
However, patrons should keep their profanity to a minimum. According to the study, using 1 or 2 in a review was useful, but using more could come out as crass.
Additionally, the study found that swear words should only be directed at the product itself, never at a particular company or individual.
The impact of profanity is studied at the University of Alberta.
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