Whether it’s choosing a restaurant, a hotel, a smartphone or clothes, user reviews and comments have become a go-to for shoppers, forming an indispensable part of consumer habits.
When it comes to vacations, in particular, reviews are key tools for decision-making. More than three quarters of vacationers (77%) worldwide do not make a reservation without reading a review. At the end of last year, a Shiji Reviewpro report found that Booking.com and Google accounted for eight in every 10 reviews in Europe, with Tripadvisor in third place.
Between the third quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023, their volume had increased by 19% worldwide.
And it’s not just vacations that consumers are reviewing online. In September last year, an Ifop survey shed some light on the influence of customer reviews on French consumers’ purchasing behavior. Some 92% of consumers said they no longer make a purchase without reading a review, up from 75% in 2021.
It’s true that it’s becoming rare to buy something without first having at least a quick look at the feedback of customers who’ve already passed through the checkout. And the effects can be radical: 51% of French people said they had ultimately cancelled a purchasing decision after seeing negative reviews.
At a time when everyone is giving their opinion on everything, with social networks becoming veritable public forums, it seems hard to imagine things shifting back in the opposite direction. And yet, a detailed report by the Qualtrics XM Institute on consumer trends forecast for 2025 highlights declining motivation for giving feedback.
It’s not so much that people no longer read reviews, but rather that consumers are becoming increasingly reluctant to post comments after a purchase that didn’t satisfy them. According to the report, 32% of customers worldwide reported sharing their dissatisfaction directly with the company concerned, down nearly 8 points in four years.
All ways of sharing negative customer feedback are in decline, even posting on social networks (16%, down 6.9 points). Only 22% of buyers posted their reviews on third-party sites, down 4.2 points. Conversely, 24% of consumers say they didn’t mention their bad experience to anyone at all, an increase of 6.3 points.
Indeed, the report summarises that people are increasingly likely to stay silent about both good and bad experiences. When people did say something after a good or bad experience, the most common response was to tell family or friends about it.
Less than a third of consumers gave feedback directly to a company, and they were least likely to post something on social media.
“In a world full of surveys constantly asking for feedback, people are increasingly less willing to answer them, leaving businesses with little to work with in their efforts to meet consumer expectations,” said Isabelle Zdatny, customer loyalty researcher at Qualtrics.
“Leaders can still gain an understanding of their customers, but it will require a more sophisticated listening programme to make up for the lack of direct feedback.”
The report included data gathered through online surveys from 23,730 consumers in 23 countries and regions including Australia, Canada, China, France, India, Italy, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea.