A 1-ton moving company told a prospective customer it could not take the job after reviewing photos of the belongings and determining there was more than it could handle. The person never used the service but left a one-star rating on Naver\u2019s booking page, saying the company was “rude to turn me down so bluntly.\u201d A restaurant received a one-star rating because it was noisy during a busy period. One local lodging operator said a guest gave the business a lower rating after being awakened by a rooster crowing in the neighborhood before dawn.<\/p>\n
These complaints have poured into online communities for small-business owners since Naver fully restored its star-rating system on its SmartPlace map service on July 9. Naver had stopped displaying star ratings in October 2021 after irrational \u201crating attacks\u201d became a social problem. One customer, for instance, gave a gimbap restaurant one star because an employee was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag. Han Seong-sook, Naver\u2019s CEO at the time, said, \u201cMany of the difficulties faced by small offline businesses stem from the star-rating system, which has become a global standard.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is little reason to believe the hardships facing small-business owners have eased since then. Yet Naver brought back star ratings amid concerns that users could switch to competing map services that have continued to offer user reviews and five-point ratings. The logic was simple: If Google can use star ratings on its map service, why should Naver be the exception?<\/p>\n
But Naver\u2019s decision has drawn particular scrutiny because of the ecosystem the company has built. Naver Maps is more than a navigation service. It has brought neighborhood businesses into its reservation and payment platform while also marketed itself as a tool for attracting customers. That helps bolster its search advertising business. Naver also provides tools for businesses to offer discounts and free gifts in exchange for reviews, encouraging promotional campaigns tied to map reviews. Over time, that has helped entrench rating inflation, with five stars effectively becoming the default on Naver.<\/p>\n
Many map services use star ratings. Far fewer, however, combine them with promotional coupons. Google Maps, one of the world\u2019s leading map and rating platforms, does not tie mapping information to marketing tools as aggressively as Naver. Nor is Naver\u2019s system simply another version of the review promotions common on food delivery apps, where free items and discounts are routinely offered. On Naver, the number of reviews and saves is treated as map information and affects a business\u2019s search ranking.<\/p>\n
On other platforms, ratings tend to follow a more natural distribution. On Naver, however, a business that cannot maintain a rating in the four-star range risks being viewed as a poor performer. Naver\u2019s market dominance only magnifies the pressure. Naver Maps has about 30 million monthly active users.<\/p>\n
That makes even an honest review from a loyal customer a source of anxiety for business owners. A regular customer who enjoys every meal but gives three stars because \u201cI don\u2019t give anyone a perfect score\u201d can still pull down a restaurant\u2019s average. A single one-star rating based on an innocent personal opinion or circumstances beyond the business\u2019s control can inflict serious damage on the overall score. Naver itself has created that vulnerability.<\/p>\n
Naver can still change course. If, as Han said when she was CEO, the company recognized the problems with the system, it should have considered how to design a service that businesses could realistically live with. The problem is not simply the return of star ratings. It is the platform\u2019s failure to take responsibility for the ecosystem it has built.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 1-ton moving company told a prospective customer it could not take the job after reviewing photos of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[623],"tags":[657],"class_list":["post-129501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-naver","tag-naver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}