A common COVID-19 symptom is ruining scented candle reviews on Amazon.
Scented candle companies may be falling victim to an unintended consequence of COVID-19: An influx of bad reviews from people who report they can’t smell the fragrance, a common side effect of the coronavirus. Kate Petrova at Bryn Mawr College, compiled the Amazon reviews for scented and unscented candles over the past few years, then posted the data visualization on Twitter.
Kate Petrova on Twitter: "I couldn’t just walk past this Tweet, so here is some fun #dataviz Scented candles: An unexpected victim of the COVID-19 pandemic 1/n pic.twitter.com/Tm17QGn0V0" / Twitter https://t.co/zMA0EGnxg5
— Mellie (@SaidInDisarray) December 1, 2020
What she found were steady favorable reviews from January 2017 to January 2020, followed by a sharp increase in negative reviews between January and November of 2020. Reviews for unscented candles during the same periods showed no such increase. London-based PhD student Moritz Wagner found a similar trend in the UK Amazon reviews for perfumes.