Quantifying the Sales Impact of Online Product Sampling

讲座题目：Quantifying the Sales Impact of Online Product Sampling主讲人：林志杰博士

讲座时间：2016年12月5日10：30

讲座地点：25教学楼A座3层C教室

主讲人简介：

林志杰博士，新加坡国立大学信息系统系博士毕业，目前为南京大学商学院营销与电子商务系助理教授。林博士的研究兴趣主要在电子商务、社交媒体、网络营销等方面。他的研究发表在MIS Quarterly、Information Systems Research、Journal of Management Information Systems等刊物上。

讲座内容：

Despite the popular use of product sampling as a promotional strategy by retailers, existing research has only studied offline sampling of physical goods and online sampling of information goods, but overlooked online sampling of physical goods. We thus assemble a rich panel-level data set from Taobao.com to quantify the sales impact of online sampling of physical goods. Based on multiple identification strategies and estimation methods, we find robust evidence that online sampling promotion has a positive relationship with product sales. Specifically, a 1% increase in the number of free samples provided of a product is related to a 0.106% increase in the product’s sales quantity. Additionally, online sampling promotion has the largest sales impact for experience products (sales elasticity = 0.291), followed by search products (sales elasticity = 0.092), and then credence products (insignificant sales elasticity). Furthermore, product popularity does not moderate the sales impact of online sampling, but is twice as effective as online sampling in driving product sales. Our empirical findings provide important contributions to existing product sampling literature, and offer critical managerial implications to online retailers’ promotional strategies.