Abstract
Interpersonal referrals can effectively promote purchases. In view of the low sales of green products, this study introduces the referral reward program into green marketing and investigates the impact of reward type on customers’ referral likelihood for green product. Through a lab experiment with 302 participants in China involved, this study reveals the differential effects of monetary versus donation rewards on existing customers’ referral likelihood. Specifically, compared with monetary rewards, donation rewards are more effective in promoting recommendations. It is also indicated that the perceived fit between the reward and green products partially mediates the relationship between the reward type and referral likelihood. In addition, the relationship between the reward type and perceived fit is moderated by consumers’ green product knowledge. This research not only extends the literature on green marketing and referral reward programs, but also provides feasible suggestions for government and enterprises to promote green products and to improve social wellbeing.
Highlights
The increasingly serious environmental problems highlight the importance of sustainable development
This study adopts the perceived fit as the mediation variable and suggests that it can effectively explain the internal mechanism of the effect of reward types on customers’ referral likelihood for green products
This study focuses on green products, aiming to explore how reward type influences existing customers’ referral likelihood for green products
Summary
The increasingly serious environmental problems highlight the importance of sustainable development In this case, more and more companies have begun to implement environmentally friendly strategies and produce green products [1,2]. It should be noted that green products have strong pro-social attributes, making them different from ordinary products [12] In this case, for green products, which kind of reward type (monetary rewards or donation rewards) is more effective might depend on the matching degree of the characteristics between the reward and the green product. This study adopts the perceived fit as the mediation variable and suggests that it can effectively explain the internal mechanism of the effect of reward types on customers’ referral likelihood for green products. Specific to the context of the RRPs for green product, the perceived fit refers to the similarity or matching degree of the attributes between the referral reward and the green product.
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