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Let’s distinguish between public and private reviews:

• Public: Addressed to potential customers and partly to the company, knowing they will read the review.
• Private: Addressed to the company only.

In this article, we’re focusing on public reviews, though many principles and obstacles apply to both.

Reasons for writing a review combine altruism, emotional needs, personal benefits, social connection, and self-enhancement $^1$.

Research shows that consumers’ decisions to leave a review often hinge on the quality of their experience $^2$. The motivation varies based on whether the intent is positive (“I’m overall satisfied”), negative (“I’m overall disappointed”), or neutral (“I have both positive and negative feedback”).

Here’s a list of reasons for leaving an organic review online, based on research and my own insights:

• Altruism
  • (positive) To recommend places to others.
  • (positive) To help the business gain visibility. Dellarocas, Gao, and Narayan (2010) found that for products within the same category (e.g., movies), consumers prefer to post reviews for less-known or very popular products, creating a U-shaped relationship between buyers’ propensity to review $^3$.
  • (neutral) To provide details about the service/product not included in the description.
  • (neutral) To help the business improve by highlighting strengths and weaknesses.
  • (negative) To warn others and help them avoid bad experiences. Fu, Ju, and Hsu (2015) suggest altruism drives both positive and negative reviews $^4$.
• Emotional need - Lovett, Peres, and Shachar provided a comprehensive research on this part (2013) $^5$.
  • (positive) To genuinely thank the business.
  • (positive or negative) To vent thoughts after an emotionally charged experience (especially for content like movies).
  • (negative) To take revenge, for one-self and out of a feeling of justice $^4$: the belief that bad sellers should get what they deserve can lead to the sharing of negative opinions).
• Personal Benefit
  • (negative) To report issues and improve their own experience (e.g., continued use of a SaaS product).
  • (negative) To seek a refund or compensation.
• Social connection
  • (neutral) To contribute to the community of reviewers who help customers online. A study found that frequent reviewers are more likely to post when the review community shows a positive attitude or has disagreements about a product $^6$.
• Self-enhancement
  • (neutral) To feel useful to others.
  • (neutral) To boost their online reputation.

These main categories of reasons can overlap. For example, a user might leave a review to recommend a business (altruism), thank them (emotional need), and share their experience (emotional need)—something commonly seen on Airbnb. Self-enhancement is often intertwined with other reasons, such as feeling proud when warning others about issues. Social connection, as reviews form a kind of social network, is almost always a motivating factor.

Catalysts are factors that trigger these motivations: