The Impact Of Uncertain Rewards On Customers' Recommendation Intention In Social Networks

Referral reward programs(RRP)have been used widely by firms as an effective customer acquisition tool.As a new form of RRPs,uncertain rewards are becoming popular,because Internet technology is making the implementation of an uncertainty promotion strategy much more efficient and practical.Firstly,in the past,displaying and selling uncertain rewards could be very costly and inefficient.For example,a consumer may balk at having to carry two blouses up to the cash register for the random draw,say,by a coin flip to take place.However,the Internet is creating a more efficient environment for doing it.In an online setting,the network platform could easily create a split-screen,illustrating the two possible component goods from which the reward is drawn,using existing product descriptors.Today,online social networking services(SNS)have received more and more attention.As the main social networking service platforms in China,Weibo and Wechat play an important role in consumer information search and information communication.Currently,many brands choose Weibo and Wechat platforms to implement their recommended rewards programs.Therefore,this article selects two social media,Weibo and WeChat,as experimental scenarios.The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of uncertain rewards in recommending rewards programs on consumer recommendation intention,in particular the differences in impact as compared with certain rewards,and the impact of the interaction between tie strength and rewards types on consumer recommendation intention.The research adopts a quantitative exploratory approach through the use of experiments.Study 1 adopted a 2x2 between-participants design[(reward type:certain reward vs.uncertain reward)x(tie strength:strong tie vs.weak tie)].Respectively,by manipulating uncertain probabilities and expected value respectively,Study 2 and Study 3 further explore the effect of uncertain rewards and tie strength on customers' referral intention.This paper finds the following:(1)compared to certain rewards,customers'referral intention under uncertain rewards is higher and positive experience has a mediating effect between reward type and recommendation intention;(2)when only the recommender is rewarded,the tie strength between the recommender and the receiver moderates the effect of reward type on the recommendation intention;for strong ties,customers' recommendation intention is higher in uncertain reward condition,but for weak ties,customers' willingness to recommend is almost the same in both reward types;(3)when both the recommender and the receiver are rewarded,although certain rewards have a higher expected value than uncertain and random rewards,for strong ties,the participants have a higher referral intention under random rewards than that under uncertain rewards,which have a higher referral willingness than that under certain rewards.Additionally,for weak ties,the reverse is true.This paper has made some contributions in theory and practice.The research has both theoretical implications for research on uncertain rewards and tie strength and practical implications for marketers and managers designing and implementing referral reward programs.However,there are still some limitations in the research of this article,which may provide room for further research in the future.First,we focus on the impact of the interaction between reward types and tie strength on the positive experience and the willingness to recommend,but do not consider the relationship characteristics between consumers and firms.Second,brand strength means that the product to a certain extent may make consumers feel satisfied.Incorporating brand strength into future research will be fruitful.Finally,we concentrated on the recommender's referral likelihood,but for a referral program to be effective,there must be referrals combined with receiver receptivity.Further research can more explicitly focus on the dyad by examining the reward program conditions under which both referral likelihood and receiver receptivity are high.