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Cited by 71Digital Marketing and Social MediaConsumer Market Behavior and PricingCustomer Service Quality and Loyalty

Words matter! Toward a prosocial call-to-action for online referral: evidence from two field experiments

Jung, Jaehwuen, Bapna, Ravi, Golden, Joseph M., Sun, Tianshu·2020·Information Systems Research
DOI 10.1287/isre.2019.0873
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Abstract

The underlying premise of referral marketing is to target existing ostensibly delighted customers to spread awareness and influence adoption of a focal product among their friends who are also likely to benefit from adopting the product. In other words, referral programs are designed to accelerate organic word-of-mouth (WOM) exposure using financial incentives. This poses a challenge, in that it mixes an intrinsically motivated process (stemming from the desire to share a customer’s delight with a product or a service) with an extrinsic trigger in the form of a financial incentive. In this paper, we demonstrate how firms can benefit from framing calls-to-action for referral programs in such a way as to move closer to the original intent of organic, intrinsically motivated WOM marketing, and yet at the same time reap the benefits of using a financial incentive to increase referral rates. In particular, via two large-scale randomized field experiment involving 100,000 customers each, we show the efficacy of a prosocial call-to-action over some of the more commonly used calls-to-action observed in practice. Additional mechanism-level analysis confirms the importance of an altruistic element in generating a higher quality of advocacy and reducing referral frictions.

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Crossref · 10.1287/isre.2019.0873

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28 of 28 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Ichheiser D, 1946, Amer. Psych., 1, 258
  2. Sun T, 2020, Management Sci.
  3. 10.1509/jm.74.2.133 · DOI

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Related

Authors
Jung, J., Bapna, R., Golden, J. M., & Sun, T.
Affiliations
  • Temple University (US)
  • University of Minnesota (US)
  • Collage.com, Brighton, Michigan 48116;
  • University of Southern California (US)
ORCID
Venue
Information Systems Research
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Published
2020-03
Volume
31
Issue
1
Pages
16-36
ISSN
  • 1047-7047 (ISSN-L)
  • 1526-5536
DOI
10.1287/isre.2019.0873
OpenAlex
W2952830335
Semantic Scholar
430eb2b65b13608d48fee5cf7a338340b113783e
Cited by
71
References
26
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 10 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1
FWCI
10.01
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Information Systems Research (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Marketing and Social Media
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Customer Service Quality and Loyalty
Keywords
referral program, word-of-mouth marketing, financial incentives, referral rates, altruism, customer advocacy

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