Brant, my co-founder and our VP of Business Development, told me he was going to see 'The Hangover' with his wife soon, and I decided to do my typical research.  Both critic and customer reviews were positive, so Debra and I decided to go.  Let me just warn you that this is one lewd and wild movie, but it is also extremely funny.  We both had some great laughs, and there are some especially funny scenes that feature a "man purse".

The next week I was reading the June 29th edition of "Feeding the Voice: Cutting-Edge Promotions from Bazaarvoice Clients".  This is a weekly email from our Community Management team, and it is one of the most important emails I get all week.  Our clients are using user-generated content throughout their multichannel and online marketing in a transformative way (see recent examples from Urban Outfitters, The Home Depot, and Argos in the UK).  And the number of cutting-edge promotions by our clients working with our Community Managers has risen to 20-30 per week, which is about the volume we saw in an entire year just two years ago.  Back to the slide deck – I open it and the first example is our client, Roots, blogging about the "man purse" in 'The Hangover'.  It turns out it is their "Village Bag in Vintage Tribe Leather", which is rated a 4.9 out of 5!  I was showing the Roots blog post to Debra last night and her comment was, "that is a really, really nice bag".

I thought this coincidence was very cool, and you just never know where the impact of social commerce will show up.  And if you are one of our U.S. readers, enjoy your 4th!  We will proudly be watching the fireworks tonight.

According to a study by MIT and University of Michigan they found a high correlation between offline word of mouth and online reviews for movies:

Another interesting finding is the higher correlation of offline word of mouth to online word of mouth compared to offline word of mouth to critics reviews.

This doesn’t surprise me. Usually when I talk to friends about a movie I hear similar feedback. Now a woman may give me slightly different ‘perspective’ on a romantic comedy than her husband ?, but the general recommendation is nowhere near as diverse as critics’ reviews. See the reviews on Invincible, from B+ to D+.

Ultimately, the question for authenticity is relevant for online reviews. There is the possibility of shills, fraud, and ‘astroturfing’. The truth is, with over 40 clients and hundreds of thousands reviews, we don’t see much fraud (and we’re getting pretty good at catching them). Of course, nothing is fool proof. With the growth of consumer-generated content, this will continue to be a focus for us to stay ahead. It’s also why our solution includes several fields to add context to the review. In usability studies we find that provides shoppers with review relevance as well as *reviewer* relevance.

The Edelman group found that ‘trust in someone like me’ has tripled over the last two years. The key phrase here is ‘someone like me’. Shoppers identify with the reviewer based on the content of the review, user attributes, and product attribute ratings.I would also assert the community of customers and shoppers are the best judges of authenticity and relevance. With helpfulness votes (which is sortable) and abuse reporting, shoppers themselves can ‘smell’ fraud. We find many of our clients' cutomers are compelled to jump in with their own review when a review that is ‘off’ is posted. So between our content analysts (we read every review and review several factors for fraud) and customers, we can maintain a high standard of authenticity.