Abstract
To alleviate uncertainties prior to purchase, consumers may learn product information through social learning (online ratings) and individual learning (free samples) channels. Drawing on a dataset from CNET.com, we empirically examined how social learning and individual learning impact consumers’ downloads of software samples. We further demonstrated that product types (hedonic or utilitarian) moderate the influences of social learning and individual learning. Specifically, the influence of user ratings is significant for utilitarian software but not for hedonic software. In addition, consumers using utilitarian software prefer both time-limited and function-limited samples while users of hedonic software only prefer time-limited samples.
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