September 15, 2020
As the leading product reviews platform with 45MM+ reviews written by our 7.5MM+ members, we have an abundance of data to decipher what the most popular brands and products are based on consumer behavior and timely trends.
Each year, we announce our Reviewers’ Choice Awards, where we use review data to showcase a variety of brands and products that consumers have either deemed as ‘tried and trues,’ ‘their cult classics,’ and/or ‘up and comers.’
In the past, we have honored those winners within the beauty landscape and this year we are also awarding brands and products within the Food and Drink categories.
Setting Influenster’s sixth annual Reviewers’ Choice Awards apart from others in the industry is that our winners are selected based on the authentic feedback from real people, not the opinions of editors, social media stars, or other category experts. This is made possible via an Influenster proprietary formula that takes into account three components of review data:
- Recency (the number of reviews written in the past 12 months)
- Star rating
- Year-over-year growth
The formula is a weighted average where we allocate equal percentages to both recency and star rating, and then a lower percentage to YOY growth. The rating and review numbers are weighted equally with this formula as the number of reviews shows the popularity of the product, and the average star rating indicates the overall sentiment of those reviews.
Growth is weighted lower to account for products that may have recently launched, which can create a much higher year-over year percentage compared to more established products that have been on the market for quite some time.
We applied this formula by pulling winners for each sub category under the following categories for Beauty: facial care, cosmetics, fragrance, and body care. Then for Food and Drinks, we pulled for the following categories: snacks, drinks, alcoholic drinks, and frozen foods.
We analyzed a year’s worth of data (August-August) from nearly 8.8 million organic product reviews across beauty categories, and for the first time ever, food and beverage categories to select 193 winners.
Of the nearly 7.5MM Beauty reviews analyzed this year, the makeup category contributed the highest volume with 3.8MM reviews, followed by skincare at 2.4MM. These two categories comprised 80% of all Beauty reviews in the past year.
Facial skincare, facial makeup, and eye makeup are the top three trending subcategories under beauty in the past 12 months. According to an Influenster survey conducted in April 2020, 49% of respondents indicated they were buying more skincare products during the pandemic because they had more time for self-care.
And for the 1.3MM Food and Drink reviews analyzed this year, Food and Snacks contributed the highest volume with 950K reviews, followed by Beverage at 428K. Under the Food and Snacks category, Candy and Chocolate contributed the highest review volume of 311K followed by Snack Foods at 128K. This is not surprising considering 49% of respondents to an Influenster survey in July 2020 said they are snacking more compared to pre-pandemic.
Congratulations to all of our winners!
View the entire list for the Influenster “2020 Reviewers’ Choice Awards: Best in Beauty, Food, and Drink” at http://www.influenster.com/awards.
