Social free sampling: engaging consumer through product trial reports

Abstract

Purpose

Recent years have witnessed the popularity of social free sampling (SFS). That is, firms on social commerce platforms (e.g. Amazon Vine and Pconline Try) offer free sample products for consumers' applications, and the selected applicants are required to write a product trial report on the sites as a return. The main advantage of SFS is to leverage users' product trial reports to increase product exposure and attract prospective consumers. Thus, product trial reports play a central role in SFS. Despite that scholars have examined the rating bias of product trial reports in recent years' knowledge concerning how product trial reports influence user (i.e. readers of product trial reports) engagement remains sparse. To address the research gap, this paper aims to examine the drivers of user engagement with product trial reports.

Design/methodology/approach

This study utilized the Poisson regression model to analyze 3,419 trial reports collected from a well-known Chinese SFS site.

Findings

Based on the ELM model, the empirical results indicate that product rating, vividness, opinion balance, and reputation of the trial user are positively associated with user engagement. However, longer reports and reports with higher emotional intensity lead to weaker user engagement. Furthermore, product prices strengthen the positive impact of opinion balance but weaken the positive impact of trial users' reputations.

Originality/value

This study is among one of the first studies to investigate the impact of trial reports on user engagement in SFS. It yields actionable guidelines for SFS campaigns.

Citation

Liao, J., Chen, J. and Jin, F. (2023), "Social free sampling: engaging consumer through product trial reports", Information Technology & People, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 1626-1644. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-11-2021-0867