Do Review Solicitations Elicit Reviews Where They Matter for Sales and Product Returns?
Abstract
Firms routinely solicit online reviews, yet it remains unclear whether solicitations generate reviews where future buyers value them most—and thereby increase sales and reduce product returns—because solicitations target reviewers while benefits accrue to buyers. Using individual-level panel data on purchases, solicitations, reviews, and returns from a large apparel e-commerce retailer and leveraging natural variation in solicitation exposure, we estimate a reviewer model measuring how solicitations affect review generation across informational states and a demand model measuring how additional reviews affect subsequent orders and returns. We find that an additional review improves downstream buyer outcomes, especially reducing return rates by up to 11.9% when prior review information is scarce. However, for reviewers, solicitations increase review incidence on average but are least effective in these low-information states. These patterns reveal a systematic reviewer–buyer misalignment: solicitations fail to elicit reviews where they matter most. We attribute this to a first-and-early review barrier driven by psychological frictions. A counterfactual exercise shows that increasing the solicitation effect in the zero-review state from its current near-zero level to 1.7%, the largest heterogeneous effect estimated across review-information states, raises net revenue by $0.72 per solicitation message, underscoring the value of overcoming early review barriers.