Online Ratings, Reviews Too Important to Ignore

Consider two purchases. The first is a can of tuna. It costs a few dollars, takes seconds to grab off a shelf and if it turns out to be the wrong choice, the consequence is a mildly disappointing sandwich. The second is a mattress. It costs anywhere from $800 to $3,000, requires a trip to a store or a leap of faith online, and if it turns out to be the wrong choice, the consequence is months of poor sleep and a return process nobody wants to navigate.

These two purchases exist in the same retail ecosystem. They both sit on e-commerce product pages. And both collect ratings and reviews. But the role those reviews play in the purchase decision is not remotely the same, and retailers that treat them as such are leaving significant revenue on the table.

New research from Caddle, conducted this past spring with approximately 2,000 Canadian shoppers, makes the stakes clear. Ninety-one per cent of Canadian shoppers describe ratings and reviews as essential to their purchase decision. Not helpful. Essential. And reviews rank second only to price as a purchase driver, ahead of free shipping, brand loyalty and word of mouth. In a category where the average transaction size runs into the thousands, that number should reshape how big-ticket retailers think about their review programs entirely.

The Considered Purchase Problem
Big-ticket home goods like furniture, mattresses and major appliances occupy a unique space in the Canadian retail landscape. They are purchases that shoppers research deeply, decide slowly and remember for years. A shopper selecting a sofa is not making a snap decision. They are imagining it in their living room, calculating whether it fits through the front door, wondering how it holds up after years of daily use and quietly hoping they do not regret it.

Reviews are the closest thing that a shopper has to the experience of owning the product before they buy it. They are proxy experiences — accounts from real people who have already made the leap. For a $2,500 mattress, that proxy experience is not a nice feature on the product page. It is the deciding factor.

The research reinforces this. Seventy-five per cent of Canadian shoppers say they trust star ratings more when a written review accompanies them. In other words, a star rating alone does not close the deal. Shoppers want the story behind the number — whether the mattress sleeps hot, the sofa cushions flatten after six months or the refrigerator is as quiet as the listing claims. Those answers do not live in a star rating. They live in reviews.

Half of shoppers say the length and depth of a review shapes their assessment of a product. In big-ticket categories, a one-line review such as “great product, fast shipping” is nearly worthless. A review that describes the assembly process, quality of the materials, dimensions relative to expectation and how the piece holds up after months of use is doing meaningful commercial work.

The Trust Signal that Cannot be Faked
One of the more striking findings in the research is 64 per cent of Canadian shoppers say real customer reviews written by verified buyers are more important to their purchase decisions now that artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content is widespread. The authentic human voice has become more valuable precisely because it has become harder to find.

For big-ticket retailers, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that shoppers are increasingly skeptical of review content that feels thin, generic or unverifiable. The opportunity is that retailers who invest in genuine, verified purchase reviews — reviews tied to real transactions, real products, real experiences — are building a competitive asset that is difficult to replicate.

The research also reveals a counterintuitive truth about negative reviews. Ninety-six per cent of Canadian shoppers actively seek out negative reviews before making a purchase. Not occasionally. Actively. And 60 per cent are suspicious of a product with a perfect five-star rating. A flawless review profile does not signal excellence; it suggests curation. A balanced profile, honest trade-offs and genuine criticism alongside praise is what builds the kind of trust that converts.

Freshness, Volume and the Three-signal Check
Canadian shoppers evaluate a review profile on three signals simultaneously: average rating, total number of reviews and recency of the content. No single signal is sufficient on its own. A 4.8 average rating with three reviews from 2022 will not move a shopper who is about to spend $1,800 on a sectional. All three signals need to be working together.

Nearly half of Canadian shoppers, 47 per cent, want to see reviews posted within the last month before they feel confident making a purchase. For seasonal categories like air conditioners or outdoor furniture, this creates a real operational challenge. Review content goes stale. A product that sold well last summer may have reviews that are already 12 months old by the time the next buying season begins. Retailers that build post-purchase review collections into ongoing operations — not one-time campaigns — are the ones that show up with fresh, relevant content when it matters most.

The research identifies a sweet spot of 11 to 25 reviews as the threshold where shopper confidence peaks across most product categories. That is an achievable target for most SKUs, but it requires intention — asking for reviews at the moment of highest customer satisfaction, after delivery, installation and first use. It also means making the review submission process easy and giving shoppers guidance on what a useful review looks like.

The Digital Shelf Follows Shoppers Everywhere
Seventy-two per cent of Canadian shoppers check reviews on their phones while in a physical store. A customer standing in front of a floor model, comparing it to what they saw online the night before, is completing a research journey that spans multiple channels and moments. The review content they encounter either builds confidence or erodes it.

Eighty-six per cent of shoppers actively seek out websites that feature ratings and reviews before they begin the purchase process. Reviews are not just a feature on the product detail page — they are a discovery mechanism. Retailers that surface review content across their digital presence, from category pages to search results to digital flyers, are meeting shoppers earlier in the journey and holding their attention longer.

This extends to how review content is structured for machines as well as people. Search engines, AI shopping tools and large language models can only surface what they can find and interpret. Implementing schema markup on product pages, along with structured data that labels review content in machine-readable formats, is rapidly becoming a baseline requirement for retailers that want to appear in AI-generated shopping recommendations. Reviews that are not structured for machine readability are, in effect, invisible to an increasingly important discovery channel.

The same principle applies to syndication. Forty-five per cent of Canadian shoppers find reviews through search engines before they reach a retailer’s product page, while 50 per cent encounter them on retailer websites. Shoppers are not consolidating their research around a single platform. A review that only lives on a product page is invisible everywhere else. Syndicating review content across retail channels — ensuring it appears wherever the product is sold — multiplies the commercial value of every review collected.

The Bottom Line for Big-ticket Retailers
Big-ticket home goods retailers operate in a category where purchase decisions are long, research is deep and the cost of a wrong choice, for both shoppers and retailers, is significant. In that environment, a best-in-class ratings and reviews program is not a marketing tactic — it is commercial infrastructure.

The retailers that will win the next decade of Canadian home goods retail are those that treat review content with the same seriousness they bring to pricing strategy, promotional planning and inventory management. Reviews are the new price. They travel with the shopper across every channel, answer questions at every stage of the journey and ultimately determine whether a considered purchase ends in a conversion or a lost sale.

The data is clear. The opportunity is real. The question is whether retailers choose to act on it.

Mark Smith is chief growth officer at Caddle, a leading Canadian consumer insights and ratings and reviews platform. With more than 25 years working across retail, brands and technology, Mark has a straightforward philosophy: growth comes from genuinely understanding shoppers and building partnerships that deliver real outcomes, not chasing the noise. Mark can be reached at reviews@caddle.ca.