Faculty Research - How to Spot Fake Reviews

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Online shopping has become increasingly popular in recent years due to the pandemic and the wide availability of products online. Although shopping online is convenient, it comes with risks.

People increasingly rely on online reviews to determine if a product is worth buying. But, how do we know that these reviews are genuine and legitimate? Saunders professors Gijs Overgoor, Ph.D., and Ali Tosyali, Ph.D., recently looked into this issue. Their published research on the topic is gaining local and national attention.

Scammers Are Flooding Amazon With Fake Reviews For Popular Holiday Gifts, Forbes
How to Spot Fake Reviews and Shady Ratings on Amazon, The Wall Street Journal
To Spot Fake Online Reviews, Target the Reviewers, UCLA Anderson Review
Detecting Fake Review Buyers Using Network Structure: Direct Evidence from Amazon, RochesterFirst
RIT, UCLA professors investigate whether all Amazon product reviews are real, Spectrum News
Researchers at RIT release study to help spot fake reviews on Amazon, WHEC-TV
Fake reviews make it hard to buy online. RIT professors are trying to fix that, WXXI News
‘Real or fake?’: RIT marketing researchers study fraudulent Amazon reviews, WROC-TV

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“While online shopping provides ease and convenience, false reviews are hazardous as consumers rely heavily on other customer’s opinions,” says Overgoor. “It is important to look at how novel technologies influence the sale of products and services, and it is crucial we learn how to solve these problems that arise,” says Tosyali.

Gijs Overgoor is an assistant professor of marketing at Saunders whose interest areas revolve around how artificial intelligence and econometrics can solve modern-day marketing problems.

Ali Tosyali is an assistant professor of management information systems. His primary research interest areas are at the intersection of network science, machine learning, and complex systems, looking at topics such as opinion mining, social network analysis, and business analytics.

Saunders students, specifically those in marketing and business analytics programs, have been looking at this study in their courses. This groundbreaking research on detecting fake reviews is teaching students about the implications of modern technology and ways to problem-solve in the business world.