Online reviews have profound impacts on firm success in terms of sales volume and how much customers are willing to pay, yet firms remain highly dependent on customers’ voluntary contributions. A popular way to increase the number of online reviews is to use product testing programs, which offer participants free products in exchange for writing reviews. Firms that employ this practice generally hope to increase review quality and secure higher product rating scores. However, a qualitative study, experimental study, and multilevel analysis of a field study dataset of more than 200,000 online reviews by product testers combine to reveal that product testing programs do not necessarily generate higher quality reviews, nor better product ratings. Only in certain circumstances (e.g., higher priced products) does offering a product testing program generate these benefits for the firm. Therefore, companies should consider carefully if and when they want to offer product testing programs.

在线评论在销售量和客户愿意支付的金额方面对公司的成功产生深远的影响，但是公司仍然高度依赖于客户的自愿捐款。增加在线评论数量的一种流行方法是使用产品测试程序，该程序为参与者提供免费产品，以换取撰写评论的机会。采用这种做法的公司通常希望提高评论质量并确保获得更高的产品评分。但是，对产品测试人员对200,000多个在线评论的现场研究数据集进行的定性研究，实验研究和多层次分析相结合，表明产品测试程序不一定会产生更高质量的评论，也不一定会产生更好的产品评级。仅在某些情况下（例如，价格较高的产品）确实提供了产品测试计划，从而为公司带来了这些好处。因此，公司应仔细考虑是否以及何时要提供产品测试程序。