Marketing

Hot Topic: Should Yelp ban compensation for reviews?

At the mall, it’s where band tees are the only tees. In Retail Brew, it’s where we invite readers to weigh in on a trending retail topic.
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Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know

Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.

As part of a crackdown on fake reviews, Yelp is both publishing an index of businesses that violate its review policy and flagging those businesses’ pages with pop-up alerts that they’ve transgressed. Since 2012, Yelp has flagged what it calls “compensated activity,” namely “someone offering payment in the form of cash, discounts, gift certificates, or other incentives in exchange for writing, changing, preventing, or removing reviews.” The policy does not just cite businesses for offering compensation for five-star reviews, but for any review at all.

You tell us: Should businesses on Yelp be prohibited from providing compensation for any reviews, or just reviews that they insist are five stars? Cast your vote here.

Circling back: Last week, we told you how 22 states have abolished the tax on menstrual products, but 21 states are still taxing the products, and that eight woman-founded menstrual-hygiene brands have formed the Tampon Tax Coalition to advocate for abolishing the tax in those states, too. We asked if you thought the tax on period products should be abolished in the 21 states where it remains.

Your response was lopsided, with 95.3% saying that the tax on period products should be abolished in the 21 states where it remains. Just 4.3% of you thought that tax on period products should remain in those states, while 0.4% did not know or weren’t sure.

Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know

Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.