An Empirical Study of Free Product Sampling and Rating Bias

Information Systems Research, 30(1), 260-275. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0801

The University of Auckland Business School Research Paper Series

Posted: 18 Oct 2021

See all articles by Zhijie Lin

Zhijie Lin

Tsinghua University - School of Economics and Management

Ying Zhang

University of Auckland Business School

Yong Tan

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business

Date Written: 2019

Abstract

Free product sampling has increasingly become a popular promotional strategy and served as a new mechanism of product review generation in e-commerce. We empirically analyze how a product’s engagement in free product sampling affects the product’s review rating, and we also examine important contingent factors of product pricing and product popularity. Using a rich data set from Taobao.com and multiple identification strategies and estimation methods, we find that engaging in free product sampling increases product rating by 1.1%. We argue that it is consumers’ reciprocal behavior of giving higher ratings as a return to retailers’ beneficial actions that causes rating bias. We further find that the bias would be larger with higher original price but smaller with larger price discount and higher product popularity. Our empirical findings provide important contributions to the literature on product sampling and word-of-mouth and offer critical managerial implications to online retailers, rating system designers, and consumers. Full paper available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0801

Keywords: product sampling, product trial, rating bias, product review, word-of-mouth, electronic commerce, econometric analysis

Suggested Citation

Lin, Zhijie and Zhang, Ying and Tan, Yong, An Empirical Study of Free Product Sampling and Rating Bias (2019). Information Systems Research, 30(1), 260-275. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0801 , The University of Auckland Business School Research Paper Series, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3942152

Zhijie Lin (Contact Author)

Tsinghua University - School of Economics and Management ( email )

Haidian District
Beijing, Beijing 100084
China

Ying Zhang

University of Auckland Business School ( email )

12 Grafton Rd
Private Bag 92019
Auckland, 1010
New Zealand

HOME PAGE: https://unidirectory.auckland.ac.nz/people/profile/zhang-ying

Yong Tan

University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business ( email )

Box 353226
Seattle, WA 98195-3226
United States

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