Beyond Stars: Rating Badges, Attention Decay, and Commercial Impact in E-Commerce

Abstract

Do rating milestones create durable attention? We assemble monthly panels (2010–2023) for three Amazon categories and study what happens when products first cross common badges (≥4.0, ≥4.5). Using an event-time, within-product design, we compare post-crossing months to the month just before on ln(1+reviews), a standard attention proxy. We find no generalized “afterglow.” Attention often peaks before the milestone and cools afterward, with pronounced decay in Beauty & Personal Care (≈ 6–7% decline after crossing), near-zero effects in Home & Kitchen, and threshold-dependent patterns in Electronics. A random pseudo-crossing placebo indicates our effects exceed background drift, and robustness checks (wider windows, alternative scaling) yield consistent conclusions. We contribute a scalable identification template for threshold events, show category-contingent responses to rating badges, and translate findings into post-badge playbooks for brands and guidance for platform badge design.