Amazon has struck a rich marketing vein with its AI-generated summaries of product reviews, a feature the company first introduced in 2023 and appears to have become ubiquitous. To relieve shoppers of having to slog through endless screens of individual product reviews (Amazon reported more than 1.5 billion submitted in 2022), it now posts a short paragraph at the top of the list that distills all the blather into a few generalizations.
For example, the AI blurb for a product with more than 120,000 reviews and averaging 4.6 stars: “Customers find this electric toothbrush to be a premium product that delivers thorough cleaning with its scrubbing action and leaves teeth feeling polished and fresh. They appreciate its four different settings and consider it good value for money.”
Review summaries can also be brutal. For a particular waffle iron that earned an average of 4.2 stars, the AI blurb nevertheless mentions: “While the appliance makes great waffles and grilled sandwiches, customers report issues with heat control, taking a long time to heat up, and experiencing breakage problems, particularly with the thin plastic base.”
The summary for a popular brand of casual shoe: “Value for money opinions are divided, with some considering them a great buy while others say they're not worth the price tag.”
The concept of value for money has been around for decades, largely used in the government sector to discuss policies and budgets for programs such as public housing, to gauge efficiency and effectiveness. Governments want to know, for example, if underwriting affordable housing will reduce social safety-net costs.
Value for money suddenly gained traction in the consumer sector this year, and has become a frequent mention in the AI blurbs on Amazon. A Google Trends search finds a huge spike in mentions began in February, a month in which consumer confidence collapsed and grassroots movements like “No Buy 2025” encouraged spending boycotts.
In the consumer economy, value for money is hard to define because it is personal. But it is becoming a big deal, especially in the U.S. where tariff uncertainty has fanned renewed inflation fears, housing remains unaffordable, and shoppers have loaded themselves up with debt. According to a recent McKinsey & Company report, State of the Consumer 2025, “Consumers are redefining what value means to them.”
Consumer-facing companies that aren’t paying attention do so at their peril. Brand loyalty is losing power and more-value-for-the-price is becoming an expectation. Look what happened to Starbucks a year ago after consecutive quarters of disappointing results, same-store sales, and earnings. As we noted here at the time, Bloomberg reported that the company “is bleeding customers who no longer want to shell out for high-priced coffee drinks.”
One of the big winners in a value-for-money economy has been Aldi, the quirky grocery store chain we covered here recently. The surge in sales of private label goods versus national brands is driving up profit margins at major retailers and changing how they market the value-for-money message.
Value for money is here to stay. A recent report by accounting giant Deloitte, based on a deep data dive, found that, “Today, 4 in 10 Americans are value seekers—defined as surveyed consumers who exhibit three or more cost-conscious, deal-driven, or convenience-sacrificing behaviors each month across grocery/retail, restaurants, leisure travel, and automotive.”
Consumers in 2025 are no longer just looking for deals. With the proliferation of competing promotions that lack real urgency, for retailers every day needs to be “prime day.” And because shoppers are heavily influenced by reviews, a “good value for money” mention on Amazon is marketing gold.
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