• Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Monday, December 29, 2008 10:45 AM

Andrea James spent some time examining the power of online customer reviews, concluding "consumers are increasingly relying on the opinions of people they've never met."

James also finds that businesses are using customer reviews in their marketing campaigns, providing links to top-ranked products and, in some cases, flirting with the idea of making the reviews accessible via cell phone in brick-and-mortar stores.

"It is as if all online shoppers have an instant community of friends, recommending the good and warning about the bad," says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a marketing professor at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. But some people rate everything they try; others never rate anything. And merchants and competitors can disguise ulterior motives behind fake names.

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