How the structure of online reviews shapes their helpfulness

We all have experience evaluating things: online products, services and even other people. Yet such evaluations are rarely straightforward, as most targets combine positive, negative and neutral aspects. For example, a reviewer assessing a laptop might praise its performance and design while criticising its battery life.

This raises a practical question: in what order should such information be presented to be most useful? A similar challenge arises when assessing others’ performance, where strengths and weaknesses must be weighed carefully. More broadly, this creates a dilemma: should an evaluation begin with criticism and end on a positive note, or start positively before turning to drawbacks?

Despite this common dilemma, existing research has largely focused on the overall sentiment of evaluative messages – whether feedback is positive or negative – rather than how different elements are organised within a message.

Dr Yeun Joon Kim, Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School, explains:

“Any target of evaluation typically has both positive and negative aspects, which makes crafting evaluative messages challenging. 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 role of feedback structure in making reviews helpful

Research on this topic was conducted by Dr Luna Luan, Lecturer at the University of Queensland, and by Dr Kim based on nearly 200,000 Amazon reviews of various products ranging from clothing to food to electronics.

The research finds that a review’s usefulness to readers depends not just on whether it is overall positive or negative, but also on the sequencing of positive and negative content throughout the review: “We term this arrangement ‘feedback structure’, defined as the organisation of multiple pieces of evaluative information within a single message about a target,” says the research, which finds further that different types of sequencing are more or less helpful depending on how highly rated the product is in that particular review.

In short, say the authors: “How evaluative information is organised matters as much as what is said.”

Why the best review structure depends on how well a product is rated

For high-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,” says Dr Luan, who worked on the research while earning her PhD at Cambridge Judge. “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.”

Adds co-author Dr Kim: “Our findings have very real 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. 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.

“More broadly, this research suggests that performance evaluations within organisations should also consider how feedback is structured, tailoring it to the level of employee performance.”

Moving beyond the feedback sandwich and other online feedback models

Previous research on the helpfulness of online product reviews identified a couple of commonly used approaches by writers of online reviews:

• the “‘feedback sandwich’, where criticism is sandwiched between praises” to make the negative part seem not so severe, say the authors
• the Pendleton model, dating from a well-known 1980s book on education, which begins with a factual narrative followed by praise and concluding with criticism

Both these approaches use a 3-part format (beginning, middle and ending) that seeks a more balanced message to readers. The research at Cambridge Judge also adopts this 3-part approach, but also adds a couple of other 3-part structures: opening tone (positive, neutral or negative) and valence trajectory (increasing, decreasing or steady) – therefore yielding 9 possible structures 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.

The final sample for the research examined 5,487 distinct products, analysing 195,675 reviews of those products based on product performance and related factors as reflected in the reviews, and a helpfulness score as measured by reader votes.

When common review styles are not the most helpful

A central finding of the research is 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 maximise 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.

Suggestions on how to structure review platforms to boost helpfulness

The study details how micro-prompts on review platforms could be structured. When products are highly rated, reviewers could be encouraged to start with any minor issues before explaining what went well overall, leading readers to perceive a review as credible and balanced. For average-rated products, reviewers could be asked to start with what could be improved before being guided progressively toward a negative trajectory that readers find as diagnostic. For low-rated products, reviewers could be invited to open constructively by noting positive aspects before sharing their main concerns, helping to establish goodwill and preventing a review being seen as overly harsh.

“Such small changes in prompt wording or field order can significantly alter how reviewers structure their narratives, aligning their natural writing flow with the structures that audiences actually value. Importantly, these nudges do not censor or distort authentic consumer voices but instead help reviewers present their thoughts in ways that maximise clarity, credibility and usefulness,” say the authors.