Not just for the recommender: How eWOM incentives influence the recommendation audience

Due to the high persuasiveness and broad accessibility of online reviews, companies have become interested in proactively managing this form of customer-to-customer communication. To date, marketers have commonly used monetary incentives to increase recommendation likelihood, thereby providing extrinsic motivation. However, in terms of the perspective of the review reader who is aware of the monetary reward, this incentive form also includes potential negative consequences, such as credibility loss of online recommendations and impairment of the company perception through consumer skepticism. This study analyzes two alternative incentive programs for increasing recommendation likelihood, addressing an altruistic form of motivation to overcome the drawbacks regarding perceptions of recommendations and of the company. A scenario-based experiment was designed to compare the effects of the eWOM incentives from a review-readers' perspective. We used attribution theory as conceptual framework to explain consumers' reaction regarding incentive-based reviews. Finally, the results are discussed and practical implications are deduced.