What Buzz Tells Us About Product Quality

In usability studies conducted at Wize.com, participants told us that they used three inputs to determine whether or not a movie was worth seeing:

First they read the reviews and/or watched them on TV.

Next, they asked friends, or went online to see what word of mouth said.

Finally, they looked at the box office returns for the first two weeks.

I was amazed. Box office returns? Really? Here’s why: according to our participants, good press can cause a movie to have a big opening weekend. But if word of mouth is not good, then the movie might not be either – the box office will be impacted by the second week. “Snakes on a Plane”, anybody?

Wize is built around the same three inputs our customers told us were the most important:

We leverage expert product reviews from the most reliable sources – the Ebert and Roeper model.

We include user reviews to get a sense for what real people who’ve used to the products think about them.

We measure a product’s buzz to let people know whether a product is up to its hype. Great products enjoy good buzz for a long time. Not-so-great products tend to make a big splash, but disappear quickly.

It’s fascinating – and in some ways, counter-intuitive – to think of what buzz, or a measure of popularity, can teach us about product quality. But it tells us more than that. A popular product, such as the iPod, tends to be more compatible, have more accessories, and might even have its own support group.

As new products are launched, it will be interesting to watch the “box office returns” come in. Will the next version of the Canon PowerShot make a big splash and then disappear? Will the Apple iPhone be a great product, or just an exciting one?

We’d love to hear what you think.