If buyers don't see a critic's thumbs up or down, number of stars or colored circles when looking for the latest movie or gadget, they would be wise to avoid the product altogether, a new University of Florida study finds. Critics tend to shy away from reviews of turkeys, lemons and losers because they are under tremendous pressure to praise the product or film, while a deceptive or false review could cost them credibility, said Steven Shugan, a UF marketing professor who did the study. So if you don't find any information about the product you're interested in, odds are it's probably not very good.
Conflicts of interest are apparent, for example, in magazines that rate cars for consumers.
Reviewers are in a bind to say something nice because auto manufacturers advertise in these publications and might withdraw their business if publicity is negative, Shugan said. The conflict for movie reviewers is that the parent company owning the magazine in which the reviewer's column is published or the television program on which his comments are aired often also produces the movie being reviewed, he said. In research involving both cars and movies, Shugan and UF graduate student Lawrence Winner found that in order to strike a balance between satisfying corporate pressures to say something nice and retaining the reader's credibility, reviewers generally don't critique what they can't rave about. If they really felt some Disney movie stunk, they might have just chosen not to review that film on their program. Of course, for big-budget films, reviews are usually necessary.