Online review structure, not just sentiment, predicts what readers find helpful

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A study of nearly 200,000 Amazon reviews shows that the usefulness of online product reviews depends not only on what is said, but on how the information is structured. The researchers, from the Universities of Cambridge and Queensland, studied Amazon reviews for products ranging from clothing to food to electronics. They found that how the information is organized matters as much as what is said, and that different review structures are more or less helpful, depending on how highly the reviewer has rated the product.

Their results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, could help companies and third-party review platforms design their review pages to prompt the sort of reviews that will be most helpful to potential customers.

How review structure shapes impact

For example, a reviewer assessing a laptop might praise its performance and design while criticizing its battery life, so how should such information be structured to be most useful to the reader? Should the review begin with criticism and end on a positive note, or start positively before turning to drawbacks?

"Any target of evaluation typically has both positive and negative aspects, which makes crafting evaluative messages challenging," said co-author Dr. Yeun Joon Kim from Cambridge Judge Business School. "The key question is how to structure these elements within a single message. For example, one might present criticism upfront and then move to praise, or instead integrate negative points within an otherwise positive evaluation. Yet research has paid little attention to this structural dimension.

"We wanted to understand whether certain structures are consistently more effective, or whether their effectiveness depends on the performance of the target being evaluated."

The study was based on 195,675 reviews of 5,487 distinct products, and it assessed performance and related factors as well as a helpfulness score as measured by reader votes.

The researchers identified nine possible structures of online reviews ranging from Type A reviews that start positive and become more positive as they go along, to Type I reviews that start negatively and become even more negative—with lots of variance in between.

Different tones for different ratings

For highly-rated products, reviews that grow increasingly positive are most helpful to readers, while those that turn negative are least helpful. For average-rated products, progressively negative trajectories enhance helpfulness, whereas reviews that start negative and grow positive are least effective. For low-rated products, reviews are judged most helpful when they open constructively before introducing criticism.

"The results are nuanced but very clear," said co-author Dr. Luna Luan from the University of Queensland, who carried out the research while earning her Ph.D. at Cambridge Judge Business School. "Looking at the overall sentiment of reviews does not fully translate into message effectiveness. It is the broader structure of sentiment—how positivity and negativity evolve throughout the review—that shapes how readers interpret online reviews."

What platforms and reviewers can learn

"Our findings have practical implications for how platforms and companies can design review pages in order to elicit the sort of reviews that will be most helpful to readers based on how highly products are rated," said Kim. "For example, instead of simply asking "Write your review here," the online review form could instead include micro-prompts that guide how reviewers structure feedback in a way recipients find most helpful."

The researchers found that the most commonly used review styles are not necessarily the most helpful to readers. In particular, for average- and low-rated products, the structures that reviewers tend to adopt often differ from those that readers find most useful.

This mismatch likely reflects different underlying motivations. Reviewers are not always writing to maximize usefulness for others, but may instead be expressing their own experiences, frustrations or emotions—especially when evaluating products of moderate or poor quality. As a result, review writing often serves both as information sharing and as a form of self-expression. This helps explain why widely used review styles do not always align with what readers perceive as most informative or helpful.

Publication details

Yingyue Luna Luan et al, The role of review structure in perceived helpfulness, Scientific Reports (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-41169-z

Journal information: Scientific Reports

Provided by University of Cambridge