This morning's research brief from the Center for Media Research says that consumers prefer peer reviews on e-commerce sites, and place greater trust in those brands that support peer reviews. They claim that readers prefer peer reviews over expert reviews "by a 6-to-1 margin".

The data comes from an online-administered poll sponsored by Bazaarvoice and Vizu Corporation, both organizations that make their living helping e-commerce providers improve the performance of their Web offerings. A quick read of the original press release (http://www.bazaarvoice.com/press072307.html) suggests to me, at least, that this data needs to be taken with a grain of salt. As with all online polls, this one is potentially victim of selection bias, meaning that the people who voluntarily took time out from their online shopping to share their opinions about peer-reviews might, in fact, may not represent the population at large. It seems likely to me that they are much more likely to be ardent reviewers themselves and not representative of mainstream customers.

According to the press release:

Vizu is an innovative service that combines an easy-to-use polling platform with a diverse network of websites. The technology allows anyone to conduct affordable market research or to provide interactive content through a free polling widget. Vizu users include Glamour, Sephora, Popstar! Magazine, Jobster, Orbitz, Cozi, Second Life, TeeBeeDee, TripWiser and is the polling partner for all Wetpaint Wikis.

The say that their polling is geographically diverse, and employed "a geographic audit [that] was performed to ensure unbiased and valid results." These are not unbiased results. While selection bias is always a factor in any kind of polling and surveys, web-based polling is particularly vulnerable. The reason companies are turning to web-based polling is that it is cheaper to administer and it is increasingly difficult to get people to participate in telemarketing surveys.