管理工程学报2025，Vol.39Issue(3)：58-70,13.DOI:10.13587/j.cnki.jieem.2025.03.005
赠品价格机制对用户推荐意愿的影响研究
Research on the impact of price mechanism for giveaway on users' willingness to recommend
摘要
Abstract
Social marketing is a means of marketing using social networks.This type of marketing closes the psychological distance between the company or platform and the consumer through conversation,interaction and feedback between users,and achieves marketing objectives through empathy.An important role is played by the word-of-mouth effect.In order to develop new users,companies or platforms often use referral reward schemes to motivate users' willingness to recommend.Referral reward schemes are used to incentivise"seed users"to spread,recommend,share and so on,to achieve"fission"growth in the number of users and complete the absorption of new users.In recent years,referral reward schemes have been emerging in the e-commerce sector and have achieved significant results One of the common forms of reward in referral reward schemes is the giveaway,and price is an important attribute of the giveaway.In a referral reward scheme,expensive giveaways are often harder to obtain,and the more times users recommend,the higher value giveaways can be obtained,which brings about contradictions in the area of social exchange.According to the social exchange theory,when users invite others to get certain economic benefits,there will be corresponding psychological costs.The more friends a user invites,the more likely he or she is to feel grateful,guilty or"indebted",a so-called relationship resource or intrinsic reward,and the higher the psychological cost in terms of interpersonal relationships.The price of the gift may have an impact on the user's willingness to recommend,as the user has to weigh the financial benefits of the recommendation against the costs involved.If the giveaway is cheaper,the time and psychological cost for users to get the giveaway is relatively low,but if the value of the giveaway is also lower and it may be less attractive to users.If the giveaway is more expensive,it is usually more attractive to users,but the time and psychological cost of obtaining the giveaway is higher.Current studies have no consistent conclusions on how users will choose in the two situations.Therefore,based on the experiment of bonus points exchange activity,this paper will focus on the impact of the price mechanism on users' willingness to recommend in a referral reward scheme Based on the social exchange theory,this paper uses a community-based idle trading platform as a research context to conduct a simulation experiment to investigate the impact of the price and different price mechanisms(i.e.,the combination of high and low prices)on users' willingness to recommend in a referral reward scheme.This study uses a simulated"Invite your friends,redeem your points"campaign on an e-commerce platform as a research scenario to collect data on the respondents' willingness to recommend through questionnaires and to test the research hypotheses..In order to give respondents a more realistic experience of the points-for-purchase scenario,this paper designed and developed a real online shopping platform,and showed the real interface of the points exchange activity to the users in the questionnaire,so that they could see all kinds of giveaways on the interface and the corresponding points needed for exchange.The results of the study show that:1)setting giveaways as rewards can enhance users' willingness to recommend,,so it is an effective incentive method;2)compared with high-priced giveaways,low-priced giveaways can enhance users'willingness to recommend.This may be because although low-priced giveaways bring less revenue,they are less uncertain in terms of acquisition and also provide more available expected revenue at a lower psychological cost;3).the different price mechanisms of giveaways do not have a significant difference on users' willingness to recommend,but there is an effect on users' intrinsic willingness to want to obtain giveaways.Based on the above findings,this paper puts forward some constructive suggestions for enterprises:first,when designing a referral reward scheme,users can be incentivised to participate in referrals by using rewards in the form of giveaways,with as many low-priced freebies as possible,and more types of giveaways,or by using a reward distribution method that rewards both the invitee and the invitee to achieve a more effective referral reward scheme. This study has certain theoretical contributions and practical implications.In terms of of theoretical contribution,this paper focuses on the emerging social marketing activity of referral reward scheme.From the perspective of social exchange theory,the study innovatively explores the impact of the price of the giveaway on users' willingness to recommend based on the balance between cost and benefit.Moreover,the current study on the factors affecting the the willingness to recommend in referral reward schemes is supplemented,and the theoretical system of the influencing factors is improved.In terms of practical implications,this paper puts forward valuable suggestions for enterprises or platforms to make more effective decisions when formulating online referral reward schemes.关键词
社会化营销/推荐奖励计划/价格机制/推荐意愿Key words
Social marketing/Referral reward program/Price mechanism/Referral intention分类
管理科学引用本文复制引用
杨雪,庄雨,陈琬舟..赠品价格机制对用户推荐意愿的影响研究[J].管理工程学报,2025,39(3):58-70,13.基金项目
国家自然科学基金项目(72272075)、南京大学新时代文科卓越研究计划"中长期研究专项"(14914220)、南京大学文科青年跨学科团队专项"中央高校基本科研业务费专项资金"(14370115) The National Natural Science Foundation of China(72272075) （72272075）
The Nanjing University Special Program for Middle and Long Term Outstanding Research in New Era Humanities and Social Sciences(14914220) （14914220）
The Nanjing University Special Program for Young Faculty in Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(14370115) （14370115）
