Abstract

Online reviews have been thoroughly studied in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets, but less so in a business-to-business (B2B) context. On B2B review platforms like g2Crowd, both the platform and sellers heavily engage in review elicitation by inviting and incentivizing customers to write reviews. Despite the rich amount of research on online reviews, it is unclear how elicitation affects reviewing in B2B markets. Combining unique datasets from two B2B review platforms, we investigate different types of elicitation initiated by the platform and the seller, including email invitations and gift cards. Deriving hypotheses from relationship marketing and motivation theory, we use a difference-in-difference design to test our assumptions. Our results suggest that seller-initiated (platform-initiated) elicitation is associated with an increase (decrease) in review ratings, while review length is negatively associated with elicitation elicited by sellers, but not by platforms. Our results carry valuable managerial implications for B2B review platforms, sellers, and customers.

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Money Makes the Reviewer Go Round – Ambivalent Effects of Online Review Elicitation in B2B Markets

Online reviews have been thoroughly studied in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets, but less so in a business-to-business (B2B) context. On B2B review platforms like g2Crowd, both the platform and sellers heavily engage in review elicitation by inviting and incentivizing customers to write reviews. Despite the rich amount of research on online reviews, it is unclear how elicitation affects reviewing in B2B markets. Combining unique datasets from two B2B review platforms, we investigate different types of elicitation initiated by the platform and the seller, including email invitations and gift cards. Deriving hypotheses from relationship marketing and motivation theory, we use a difference-in-difference design to test our assumptions. Our results suggest that seller-initiated (platform-initiated) elicitation is associated with an increase (decrease) in review ratings, while review length is negatively associated with elicitation elicited by sellers, but not by platforms. Our results carry valuable managerial implications for B2B review platforms, sellers, and customers.