Testimonial

In promotion and advertising, a testimonial or show consists of a person's written or spoken statement extolling the virtue of a product.

[1] Advertising and marketing companies sponsor celebrities to tweet and influence thousands (sometimes millions) of their followers to buy brand products.

On 1 August 2007, laws were passed banning healthcare professionals and public figures such as movie stars or pop singers from appearing in advertisements for drugs or nutritional supplements.

The downside to such explosive importance in this arena is the massive amount of fraud in the form of fake reviews or opinion spam, testimonials that are not authentic.

From a New York Times article about the same topic, "On another forum, Digital Point, a poster wrote, 'I will pay for positive feedback on TripAdvisor.'

[6] Research by Martin, Wentzel and Tomczak (2008) found that the effectiveness of testimonials depends on the degree to which consumers are influenced by normative pressure and the quality of the product features highlighted.

Results showed that people influenced by peer pressure place a greater emphasis on the testimonial than on the attribute information.

[7] The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that in US businesses, an alarming number of testimonials were in fact fictitious and misleading.