In our initial exploration of non-textual factors that are correlated with helpfulness evaluation on Amazon, we found a broad collection of effects at varying levels of strength.1 A significant and particularly wide-ranging set of effects is based on the relationship of a review’s star rating to the star ratings of other reviews for the same product. We view these as fundamentally social effects, given that they are based on the relationship of one user’s opinion to the
opinions expressed by others in the same setting