Ecommerce
Tactic

Respond to Negative Reviews

Only 4 percent of businesses respond to negative reviews, yet these responses boost sales.

Negative review with reply from business owner

Overview

Responding to negative reviews can help in various ways.

  • Hotel bookings increased by 60% (Ye, Gu, Chen, & Law, 2008)
  • Ratings increased 20% (McIlroy, Shang, Ali, & Hassan, 2015)
  • Review volume increased by 17% (Xie et al., 2016)

Yet less than 4 percent of businesses respond to negative reviews (Xie et al., 2016). That gives you an opportunity to stand out.

  • McIlroy, S., Shang, W., Ali, N., & Hassan, A. E. (2015). Is it worth responding to reviews? studying the top free apps in google play. IEEE Software, 34(3), 64-71.
  • Xie, K. L., Zhang, Z., Zhang, Z., Singh, A., & Lee, S. K. (2016). Effects of managerial response on consumer eWOM and hotel performance: Evidence from TripAdvisor. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
  • Ye, Q., Gu, B., Chen, W., & Law, R. (2008). Measuring the value of managerial responses to online reviews-A natural experiment of two online travel agencies.