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    Five-Star Rating

    A five-star rating is a 1-5 ordinal scale, typically displayed as star icons, used for product reviews, app stores, and lightweight CSAT.

    Five-star ratings dominate consumer review platforms (Amazon, Google, App Store, Trustpilot) because they are intuitive and low-effort. They suffer from J-shaped distributions: most reviews cluster at 5 or 1 with very few in the middle. App Store research shows the average iOS app rating in 2026 sits at 4.5-4.7 due to in-app prompt timing optimization. Five-star ratings are great for public-trust signals and bad for granular CX measurement — use a 7-point Likert or 0-10 NPS scale for analytical work.

    Example

    App Store average iOS app rating Q1 2026: ~4.6. A 4.0 app underperforms category baseline; a 3.5 app is in critical territory. Median number of ratings needed before the displayed average stabilizes: ~75.

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    Related terms

    Likert Scale

    A Likert scale is a survey rating scale with ordered response options (typically 5 or 7 points) used to measure attitudes, agreement, or frequency.

    Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

    Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) measures how satisfied customers are with a product, service, or interaction on a 1-5 or 1-10 scale.

    Top-Box Scoring

    Top-box scoring reports the percentage of respondents who selected the highest rating (top box) or top two ratings (top-2-box, T2B) on a scale.

    Semantic Differential Scale

    A semantic differential scale presents two opposing adjectives at the ends of a 5- or 7-point scale and asks respondents to mark their position between them.

    Response Bias

    Response bias is any systematic tendency of respondents to answer questions inaccurately, either intentionally or unconsciously.