101 Kellogg Insight gem: a need that is very important, but that existing products do not meet well. To determine whether marketers can glean the same kind of information about customer needs—and potential hidden gems—from user-gener - ated online reviews as they can from interviews and focus groups, the researchers randomly selected a subset of Amazon reviews for oral- care products and provided that to a group of analysts at AMS. These analysts were not the ones who had collected or analyzed the customer interviews, but they were similarly trained. Each of the reviews in the subset was presented to the analysts in its entirety, and together the reviews added up to 12,000 sentences—which took the analysts approx - imately the same time to review as a standard set of 20–25 experien - tial-interview transcripts. Going into the study, Timoshenko and Hauser thought that the Amazon reviews might have some advantages over traditional customer inter - views. For example, perhaps they offered access to a population of cus- tomers who were unlikely to participate in a focus group. “We could imagine that, if a company’s located in Boston, they would mostly interview Bostonians,” says Timoshenko. “But maybe people in other areas have different product experiences and usage models.” Another possible advantage is that customers tend to write online reviews immediately after using something. Participants in a focus group, on the other hand, might have used the product a month or two before they are interviewed and have already forgotten key parts of their experience. However, the researchers also suspected that online reviews might Based on research from Artem Timoshenko