The Influence Of On-line Sharing And Referral Programs On Referral Likelihood

Sharing and Referral Program is a trendy marketing strategy in which customers are rewarded materially for their sharing and promoting products or services in their relationship networks,and,to some extent,it is an extension of word of mouth marketing.As an emerging tool of word of mouth management,Sharing and Referral Program is changing from off-line campaign to on-line campaign.Compared with off-line campaign for which customers have strong passion,on-line sharing is faced with some dilemma,i.e.customers are likely to consider ‘will others think I share those products for rewards?' or ‘there are so many acquaintances in social networks' and thus choose not to do it.This research is intended to explore the impact the reward object(referrers VS referrals)has on on-line sharing and referral likelihood and it is focused on the mediating effect of referrer's sense of dignity and themoderating effect of reward type,tie strength and tendency of individual regulatory focus.In this study,2×2,2×2×2 inter group factor experiments illustrate: 1)The direct positive effect of reward object on on-line sharing and referral likelihood are stronger in referral-rewarded programs than in referrer-rewarded ones and referrers' sense of dignity has an significant mediating effect during the process.2)on-line sharing and referral likelihood is regulated by reward types.If the programs provide money as rewards,there are significant differences between referral-rewarded programs and referrer-rewarded programs.If non-monetary gifts work as rewards,there are no significant differences between the 2 kinds of programs.3)on-line sharing and referral likelihood is regulated by tie strength.there are significant differences between different referral efforts in the situation of strong tie and there are no significant differences in the situation of weak tie.4)There exists an interactive effect between the objects of rewarding and the tendency of individual regulatory focus.As for promotion-focused referrers,they would rather have themselves rewarded than have others rewarded.On the contrary,prevention-focused referrers have stronger desire to get others rewarded instead of themselves.