On October 3, 2016, Amazon announced that it will eliminate most incentivized reviews – reviews written by customers in exchange for free or discounted products – except those reviews facilitated through the Amazon Vine program. Amazon, which has always banned compensated reviews, previously had allowed businesses to offer free samples to customers in exchange for reviews, as long as customers disclosed the fact of the incentive. In theory, customers receiving free products should have provided unbiased reviews; a recent study, however, showed the average rating for products with incentivized reviews was almost half a point higher than products with non-incentivized reviews. As we previously reported, this change is part of a broader industry crackdown on misleading online reviews, with the Federal Trade Commission also promising to go after marketers who do not disclose material connections between online endorsers and the product they are endorsing.
