Affinity Reviews and Recommendations

Most consumers don’t trust the content in traditional advertising and merchandising (Yankelovich, 2005). The #1 source that people do trust to get advice about products, according to Edleman’s latest Trust Survey*, is “people like you”. PowerReviews delivers exactly this — customer reviews from “people just like you” and from people who “use the product like you” — which we call Affinity Reviews.

Rather than looking at ratings and reviews from everyone that wrote reviews, Affinity Reviews allows you to look at the ratings and reviews just from reviewers like you - people with similar needs and interests. Given the highly segmented interests and lifestyles of consumers in most product categories, this more personalized approach is designed to match you with the best product for your needs.

Affinity Recommendation Wizard — Digital Cameras

In addition, PowerReviews offers Affinity Recommendations — product recommendations from people just like you. The above example shows a “recommendation wizard” for digital cameras that asks you to select the type of digital photographer you are (your “affinity group”) — both from a lifestyle and usage standpoint. This patent-pending feature then generates a list of products that are recommended by digital photographers from the same affinity group, maximizing the chance that you buy a camera that best matches your specific needs and uses.

For example, photo enthusiasts can quickly see recommendations from other photo enthusiasts, and casual photographers can see recommendations from other casual photographers. This ensures that photo enthusiasts don’t buy cameras that are below their performance requirements and casual photographers don’t find themselves with cameras they can’t operate. This personalized approach to product research is only possible with PowerReviews’ patent-pending “tag-based” technology.

To experience how this works, try shopping for a digital camera on Buzzillions.com, that uses PowerReviews' Affinity Recommendation engine.

*Source: Edleman Trust Survey