Offering incentives to stimulate positive online reviews: A critical evaluation

在线评论是客户的重要信息来源。由于在线评论无处不在，与营销者主导的来源相比，被认为是高度可信的，消费者严重依赖其他消费者对产品的评价。因此，积极的在线评论积极地影响客户的购买意愿，以及他们的支付意愿，从而影响公司业绩。因此，公司关心的是增加他们的积极在线评论。刺激在线评论的一个可能的策略是为撰写在线评论提供激励。为了做到这一点，公司向他们的客户提供货币或非货币奖励，以换取他们撰写一篇评论。因此，他们通常不会明确表示在线评论必须是积极的。由于没有证据表明这样的激励策略是否会产生预期的后果，而且公司实际上会通过提供激励措施从正面在线评论的增加中获利，因此这种策略似乎是有风险的。基于交换理论和多方法方法，将回答以下三个研究问题：(A)激励是否会增加发表的在线评论的数量？(B)激励是否会改变发表的在线评论的价格？以及(C)哪些背景因素将影响激励与发表的评论的数量及其价格之间的关系？虽然激励措施可能会增加发表的在线评论的数量，但对价格的影响不那么明显。一方面，客户可能会对该公司提供的激励措施心存感激。因此，客户可能会想要回报，并写出更积极的评论。另一方面，激励措施可能会降低在线评论的积极程度，因为如果客户写了一篇非常积极的评论并收到激励措施，他们会预计到心理成本。为了避免被买下的感觉，他们会负面地调整他们的评论。如果以及何时哪种激励策略对增加正面在线评论是有效的，这与营销研究和实践高度相关。

Online reviews are an important source of information for customers. As online reviews are ubiquitously accessible and perceived as highly trustworthy in comparison to marketer dominated sources, customers heavily rely on product evaluations of other consumers. Consequently, positive online reviews positively affect customers purchase intention as well as their willingness to pay and as a consequence firm performance. Therefore, firms are concerned with increasing their positive online reviews. One possible strategy to stimulate online reviews is offering incentives for writing online reviews. To do so, companies offer monetary or non-monetary rewards to their customers in return for writing a review. Hereby, they typically do not explicitly state that the online review has to be necessarily positive. As there is no evidence if such an incentive strategy will have the intended consequences and companies will actually profit from an increase in positive online reviews by offering incentives, this strategy seems to be risky. Based on exchange theory and a multi-method approach, the following three research questions will be answered: (a) Will incentives increase the number of published online reviews?, (b) will incentives change the valence of the published online reviews?, and (c) which context factors will influence the relationships between incentives and the number of published reviews as well as their valence? While incentives will likely increase the number of published online reviews, the effect on the valence is less clear. On the one hand, customers might feel gratitude towards the firm for offering incentives. As a consequence customers might want to reciprocate and will write a more positive review. On the other hand, incentives might decrease the positivity of online reviews because customers will anticipate psychological costs if they write a very positive review and receive an incentive. To avoid feelings of being bought, they will negatively adapt their reviews. If and when which kind of incentive strategy is effective for increasing positive online reviews is highly relevant for marketing research and practice.