My take on this is no they don’t. As long as they are truthful they only report on the quality of the product and prevent many people of spending a lot of money from losing it by buying something that doesn’t work.
If your product is shit your company does not deserve to be shielded from the backlash, this is the core of (classic) capitalism after all.
It’s not bad reviews that kill companies, it’s bad products.
@Eyedust@lemmy.world has an example of a bad review killing a potentially good product.
“Bad review” as wrong review.
Generally speaking true. However some companies manage to get the hype train going which leads to people buying bad products. As a result, a company can still survive by selling bad headphones or bad water bottles. Bad reviews can balance things a bit, but if their marketing budget is as big as the defense budget of a small country, there’s not much a bad review can do.
Obviously, this doesn’t really apply to small startups with only pennies to spend. Their marketing consists of sending samples to reviewers, and if that gamble backfires, for any reason, things aren’t going to look very good for the company. Maybe the product was bad, and they had it coming. Maybe the product was ok, but the review sample was broken. Who knows.
this is a perfect example of why @PhAzE@lemmy.ca should get posts downvoted and account banned of most major platforms (dont actually do this but see what i did there?)
Yes, my comment assumes the reviewers are being genuine. However, in a lot of cases, those people can be weeded out and themselves fail over time because they, too, are peddling bad products (reviews).