Fourteen thousand, eight hundred and fifty-nine reviews! Four and a half stars! Who can resist these authentic, crowd-sourced endorsements of a product or service? Studies and market results show that consumers rely heavily on user-submitted reviews in choosing among products and sellers on e-storefronts. But how authentic are these user reviews?
In February, the FTC settled a case with a company that it accused of purchasing falsified user reviews. Beyond outright fabrication, user reviews can be incentivized, selectively solicited, filtered, or biased in other ways. In this webcast, Foley Hoag partners August Horvath and Dave Kluft explore these various practices and the enforcement and litigation activity that they have spawned.