Hey everyone 
Whether it’s before launching a new product or to monitor competitors, do you rely on a tool, hire someone, or just read reviews manually and take notes?
Curious to hear what’s working best for you.
Most sellers end up using a mix depending on the stage they’re at, because each approach has pros and cons.
Early on or for smaller ASINs, manually reading reviews and taking notes is still the best way to really understand customer language, recurring complaints, and emotional triggers that tools often miss.
As volume grows or when analysing competitors at scale, tools that cluster reviews by themes and sentiment can save a lot of time and help spot patterns quickly, but they’re best used as a filter rather than a replacement for reading the actual reviews.
Some sellers outsource review mining to VAs using a simple framework, like categorising feedback into defects, expectations, use cases, and feature requests, then sanity-checking the conclusions themselves.
In practice, the strongest insights usually come from combining light automation with hands-on review reading, especially for product improvements and listing optimisation.