How To Persuade Existing Consumers To Refer Through Rewards

In recent years,referral reward program has been widely used in practice,as a way for enterprises to persuade their customers to use their social connections to help the enterprises acquire new customers.In reality,however,referral reward program does not always effectively motivate existing customers' recommendation behavior as expected.Meanwhile,in theory,the research on referral reward program has obviously lagged behind marketing practices.In this context,this dissertation focuses on one nature of referral reward program,which is a persuasion tactic.The main purpose of the dissertation is to explore the effect of referral reward program on existing customers' psychological state and behavioral intention,and to shed light on how to use reward settings to increase the effectiveness of referral reward program.This study first systematically reviews the connotation of referral reward program and related empirical research,including three parts: The first part systematically sorts out the connotation of referral reward program,and clarifies that referral reward program is a means of persuasion;In the second part,the effects of referral reward program in the previous literature were sorted out and reviewed;In the third part,the empirical research about reward settings was sorted out and reviewed.Finally,based on the existing research,the main research contents of this dissertation are proposed.Then,based on the persuasive nature of referral reward program,three research respectively explore their effects on recommendation intention,i.e.,the presence of the referral reward,the amount of the referral reward,and the brand-reward congruity.The first research explores the boomerang effects of referral rewards in referral reward program,by introducing the theory of psychological reactance and through a semi-structured interview and a scenario experiment.This research finds that referral rewards in referral rewards program are likely to be seen by existing customers as a threat to their freedom of behavior and attitude,which makes existing customerexperience state reactance and thus reject the referral reward program.This research expands the understandings of state reactance as an important explanatory factor of existing customers' incentived recommendation behavior,and thus provides a new theoretical perspective for the future research of referral reward program.On the basis of the first research,the second research puts forward a joint mediation model of the perceived reward attractiveness and state reactance of the relationship between the amount of referral rewards and existing customers' recommendation intention.This model explores why the amount of referral rewards will positively or negatively or not significantly affect existing customers' recommendation behavior.It is in an attempt to explain the conflicting research results between the amount of referral rewards and the recommendation behavior in existing research of referral reward program.Meanwhile,it may give a viable explanation for why referral rewards not always effectively motivating existing customers' recommendation behavior.On the basis of the second research,the third research explores the role of brand-reward congruity in the joint mediating model of perceived reward attractiveness and state reactance.This research finds that referral rewards consistent with the brand can alleviate existing customers' experienced state reactance,and increases the perceived attractiveness of referral rewards,then increasing the effectives of referral reward program.The study also highlights the important role of the link between two core elements of referral reward program,namely,the referred brand and the referral rewards.This makes the research a useful complement to the existing literature that usually treats these two elements independently.Finally,the main research conclusions of this dissertation are summarized and the corresponding managerial implications are put forward.