I recently came across a restaurant on Yelp.com, Mitchell’s Ice Cream in San Francisco, with nearly two thousand reviews. <\/p>\n
I guess the average number of reviews for a restaurant in San Francisco — or in that neighborhood, at least — is more like 20. So nearly 2,000 reviews is something else. <\/p>\n
This business has been line-out-the-door popular for decades. Is some secret of its success hidden inside its customer reviews on Yelp? <\/p>\n
Would analysis of these reviews tell us anything about the vendor or, more likely, what its customers have in common?<\/p>\n
Can those consumer insights shed any light on how that business has excelled? <\/p>\n
To be clear: the best way to investigate a business’ success is to patronize it: to go to it, observe its service and sample its product. Over time. But if you also wanted to survey its customers, a service like Yelp could be data rich. For a low research cost. <\/p>\n