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Whenever 24-year-old marketing assistant Tessa decides to buy something, she first checks reviews on TikTok and Reddit. “I like to know what a human with no vested interest in me buying the thing has to say,” she explains. “It’s so hard to trust what you see online today, which is where I’m usually finding things I want to buy, so I always look to other people to tell me what’s actually up.”
A quick scroll through social media suggests she’s far from alone. Letterboxd verdicts now appear in Instagram photo dumps (including Charli XCX’s), unsolicited product recommendations circulate endlessly on TikTok, and brand websites increasingly foreground five-star rankings and bestseller filters to guide shoppers towards what others have already deemed worth buying.
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Reddit, meanwhile, has found success positioning itself as the “antidote to AI shopping”, leaning on its peer-to-peer communities known for detailed, often brutally honest product reviews. According to the platform’s own research in the UK, 74% of people who discovered a product somewhere online later came to Reddit to validate or further research the purchase. Reviews have, in effect, become a key form of digital orientation.
“A panoply of competing issues has been eroding consumer trust for some time. Continuing politico-social uncertainty and ongoing economic pressure mean people are far more wary and need more reassurance than ever,” says Annie Corser, senior trends editor for pop culture and media at trends intelligence platform Stylus, explaining the rise of review content online. “Add the encroaching tide of AI content and bot-produced feedback, destabilizing what audiences feel they know to be true and verifiable, and reviews by real people have become an essential shield and tool for audiences struggling to keep hold of their own discernment.”
As consumers increasingly turn to Reddit for fashion and beauty product research, COO Jen Wong says the social platform is building out more advertising and in-platform shopping capabilities for brands.
“In a low-trust environment, people instinctively look to see what others are doing,” says Rachel Botsman, author, designer, and lecturer known for her work on trust and societal change. “We turn to other people’s lived experiences — the detailed hotel review, the honest skincare lowdown, the friend-of-a-friend restaurant recommendation.” With AI-generated content proliferating, trust in institutions declining, and influencers perceived as sponsored marketers, distinguishing authenticity from advertising is becoming harder than ever. “When everything looks like marketing, people start looking for signals that feel human,” she adds.
For brands leaning into review culture, the commercial upside is already evident. Medicube CEO Kim Byung-hoon told me last month that TikTok reviews were integral to the brand’s explosive growth. “We were able to see feedback in real time. People told us what they loved, and what they wanted to improve. That direct loop made us invest more heavily,” he said.
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At the same time, reviews are beginning to influence not just human shoppers but the algorithms guiding them. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Claude draw on aggregated online reviews when recommending products and brands, making review ecosystems even more consequential.
How, then, do brands cultivate positive reviews in a climate of skeptical consumers? And what happens when the tide turns against them?
The impact of AI
People have always relied on reviews to make decisions. Long before digital platforms existed, consumers turned to word-of-mouth recommendations to find trusted local tradespeople, restaurants, or shops. But in an internet saturated with automation and AI-generated content, that instinct has taken on new urgency.
Corser argues that reviews have taken on another role, too: they now serve as evidence of human intelligence in an increasingly automated internet. “As well as their utility, reviews have also taken on a social significance as a marker of human intelligence. More people are starting to voice serious concern about what reliance on tech, especially everyday AI platforms like ChatGPT, is doing to our cognitive health, and reviews — especially those reviewing things that require some emotional investment, like fashion and entertainment — act as an illustration of human spark and insight, and a level of defiance against social media’s ubiquitous promotional imperative,” she says on the rise of Goodreads and Letterboxd.
The shift is most visible in categories where taste, identity, and experience matter most. “Fashion, fitness, beauty, travel, food, and culture are all areas where people rely heavily on peer judgment because quality is subjective and context-dependent,” says Botsman. For instance, a serum may be effective but still feel wrong for someone’s routine. Reviews work in these categories because they provide context. They answer not just “is this good?” but “is this good for someone like me?”
Platforms built around peer participation are embedding this logic directly into their ecosystems. “Platforms like Depop show how fashion discovery now flows through peer taste and seller reputation, while Strava turns workouts, routes, and recommendations into shared community signals,” says Botsman. “For the people making the recommendation, sharing what they love is also a way of signaling taste and identity.”
At the same time, AI is becoming an unavoidable layer of the discovery process. While some consumers are comfortable asking tools like ChatGPT for product recommendations, that shift does not diminish the importance of reviews. If anything, it amplifies it: LLMs draw on aggregated online sentiment when surfacing products, meaning the reviews consumers leave today may influence not just other shoppers, but the algorithms guiding them.
Community, not campaigns
Trust used to be built vertically, through top-down authority: advertising, celebrity endorsement, expert approval, and carefully managed image. Today, it is built laterally, through networks of peers and the circulation of lived experience
For brands, all of this marks a deeper structural shift than the usual advice to lean into user-generated content (UGC). “The most valuable brand asset today is not reach but recommendation,” says Botsman. In her view, the brands best positioned to earn trust are those that understand how to show up consistently in communities and conversations, rather than simply through campaigns.
That means treating reviews not as something to manage at the margins, but as part of the product experience itself. For example, Alo Yoga builds reviews directly into its e-commerce interface: product pages prominently surface star ratings and written feedback from customers, while bestseller filters and “most loved” tags on their homepage guide shoppers towards pieces that have already accumulated strong peer validation.
“Customer reviews are incredibly important to Alo’s growth because they build trust at scale — especially as we continue expanding globally,” says Summer Nacewicz, EVP of marketing and creative at Alo. “We incorporate learnings from customer reviews into a feedback loop that is closely monitored across design, merchandising, and buying. Recurring themes around fit, fabrication, and performance inform future development — for example, consistent requests for additional inseam lengths led to expanded options in key trouser styles.”
Other brands are experimenting with similar mechanics in more overt ways. Glossier, for example, built much of its early growth around user feedback loops, encouraging customers to review products and shaping launches around that community input. London-based label Peachy Den takes a similar approach through a “close friends” community, where some of its most dedicated customers are invited to review upcoming product launches and help refine them before release.
As more influencers are paid to promote or review products online, however, the question of authenticity becomes harder to ignore, making the operational details of trust especially important. For beauty marketplace Lookfantastic, transparency within review systems is key. Billie Faricy-Hyett, chief buying officer, says the retailer has “partnered with Bazaar Voice, which has leveled up our offering here, adding claritys on reviews which are verified purchasers vs incentivized reviews vs reviews syndicated from other websites vs non-verified reviews. This increased level of claritys on where the review came from gives our customers increased confidence in the quality and credibility of the reviews on our site.”
Still, what happens when brands receive the inevitable negative review? Corser points to Dove’s Reddit-led work as a compelling example. The brand’s r/real campaign used unfiltered Reddit reviews to promote its Intensive Repair Serum, including critical ones. “To include the negative ones is against all the rules — why would you advertise a review saying your product doesn’t work?” she says. But, she argues, the decision ultimately reinforced trust by aligning the campaign with Reddit’s reputation as a candid, peer-driven forum. In categories such as beauty — where consumers are often navigating dense ingredient lists, scientific claims, and fast-moving viral trends — straightforward, unscripted feedback can cut through the noise.
For Botsman, the bigger opportunity lies in creating the conditions for trust to form organically. That might mean using digital reach to bring communities together offline, making the process behind products more visible, or recognising that credibility often starts in smaller, more local circles before it scales. Reviews, in that sense, are not a reputational risk to contain but a form of ongoing intelligence: a live stream of feedback, social proof, and consumer expectation.
As discovery becomes more mediated by algorithms, influencers, and AI-generated content, that layer of human validation is only becoming more valuable. For brands, the challenge is no longer simply to be seen, but to be vouched for.
