Investigating the Sales Spillover Effects of Online Product Sampling in E-Commerce

Research investigating the sales impacts of product sampling in e-commerce still lags. We attempt to answer: (1) How does the sampling of a product affect the sales of other products in the same store (i.e., in-store spillover effect)? (2) How does the sampling of a product affect the sales of the same product in other stores (i.e., cross-store spillover effect)? (3) How do the in-store and cross-store sales spillover effects vary across product types (i.e., search, experience and credence products)? Using data from a Chinese ecommerce platform, we employ panel-data model estimation techniques to find evidence of the sales spillovers of product sampling. Specifically, the sampling of a search (experience) product increases (decreases) the sales quantity of other products in the same store by 18.9% (9.4%). However, cross-store spillover effects only exist for experience products’ sampling, which increases the sales of the same product in another store by 16.5%.