Graduation Semester and Year
Spring 2026
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Marketing
Department
Marketing
First Advisor
Yiyi Li
Second Advisor
Lidan Xu
Third Advisor
Traci Freling
Abstract
In today’s competitive marketplace, online reviews have become a central feature of consumer decision-making and business strategy. Research consistently documents that online reviews have a positive impact on outcomes such as review volume and product sales, underscoring their critical role in shaping firm performance. However, the majority of consumers do not voluntarily write reviews, posing a challenge for companies that rely on user-generated content. To address this issue, companies often offer incentives to motivate customers to write reviews. Despite their widespread use, research on their impact remains limited. This dissertation is comprised of two essays that examine the impact of incentivized reviews from complementary perspectives. The first essay investigates how offering incentives for writing reviews influences customer loyalty through the psychological mechanism of gratitude. Across multiple experiments in a variety of product and service contexts, incentivized reviews elicit feelings of gratitude, which enhance customer loyalty. This essay challenges the view that incentives foster only transactional relationships, highlighting their potential to strengthen enduring customer–brand connections. The second essay is a systematic review that examines how incentives influence online reviews, focusing on review quantity, quality, and valence. Prior research presents mixed findings, obscuring when incentives enhance review outcomes and when they may backfire. These inconsistencies motivate a systematic synthesis of the literature on incentivized online reviews that integrate Self-Determination Theory and Social Influence perspectives to explain when incentives are effective, why their effects vary across contexts, and how prior research can be reconciled into a coherent framework. The systematic review synthesizes 32 empirical studies conducted from 2012 to 2025, providing a detailed description of these divergent results. Together, these two essays provide a comprehensive view of the strategic use of incentives, offering actionable insights for theory and managerial practice.
Keywords
Incentivized Online Reviews, Gratitude, Customer Loyalty, Review Valence, Review Quantity, Review Quality, Motivation, Social Influence, Systematic Review
Disciplines
Marketing
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
KHIZINDAR, SAMEEHA, "REWARDS THAT RESONATE- HOW INCENTIVIZED ONLINE REVIEWS SHAPE CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND REVIEW OUTCOMES" (2026). Marketing Dissertations. 1.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/marketing_dissertations2/1