Encouraging online review posting with push notification: Evidence from a randomized field experiment

Abstract

Recently, many e-commerce services have offered their own mobile apps. In this regard, they use push notifications to send a variety of promotional messages based on customers' behavior. While push notifications have become increasingly widespread in mobile environments, most previous studies have focused on the various aspects of notifications on user responses. However, how these operations influence users' reactions, such as encouraging online review posting, has not been effectively addressed. This specific context (i.e., review posting) demands different approaches compared with general contexts, as users have purchased and experienced the products before receiving the push notification. To examine how the different push notification operations affect customers' online review posting, we ran a field experiment with a special emphasis on notification timing. We sent a mobile push notification at different times, changing the time range between the push date and the date when a customer experienced the service. In the preliminary analysis, push delay negatively affected the probability of review posting, though there was no adverse effect up to three days after the experience. We also found that push delay was more negatively influential for experience goods than search goods. Our study provides useful implications for online marketplaces in the design of an effective management system for online reviews and mobile push notifications.