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PurposeThe purpose of this work is to test several incentive strategies for attaining new customers via electronic referrals, or e‐referrals. The paper aims to examine: the roles of both the magnitude of the incentive offered to the sender and the magnitude of the incentive offered to the receiver; and the effect of equity versus inequity of financial incentives for the two parties.Design/methodology/approachThe study consisted of a large‐scale field experiment conducted with 45,000 members of an online mall. The participants were divided into eight conditions in an incomplete two‐factor 4×4 between‐subjects design, where not every combination of incentive magnitudes was utilized and the magnitude of the incentive offered the receiver and sender varied in size such that sometimes rewards were equal, sometimes receivers of the e‐referral had larger rewards, and sometimes senders of the e‐referral s received more. Dependent measures included the number of e‐referrals sent, the number of those e‐referrals that lead to a new customer registering, and the number of new registrants that converted to buyers from completing a purchase.FindingsThe results demonstrate that both the magnitude of financial incentives, and the relative magnitude of the incentives for the senders and receivers both influence e‐referral rates. Specifically, it was found that offering higher incentives to senders and receivers led to an increase in referral invitations sent, new member sign‐ups and new buyers. It was also found that the disparity between incentives offered to senders and receivers affected e‐referral rates and that inequity should favor the sender to enhance results.Originality/valueThis paper offers marketers valuable insights as to how different combinations of financial incentives to receivers and senders can affect e‐referral rates. The findings suggest that potential referrers respond not only to referral incentives but also to the disparity between their incentives and the receivers' incentives.

Purpose Consumers’ engagement with brands online is increasingly important for marketers for both promotion of their brand’s message and sales. The purpose of this paper is to examine if consumers’ brand schematicity, a generalized consumer disposition to process information using brand schema, influenced their proclivity to engage with brands online through consuming and co-creating brand-related content, and the influence of online brand engagement on actual purchase of brands. Design/methodology/approach Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings Study 1 shows that brand schematicity increases online brand consumption and online brand co-creation and Study 2 shows that this online brand engagement is not always beneficial to brands in terms of sales. Specifically, because of resource depletion, consumers who co-create brand content online may purchase brands less while those that consume online brand content purchase more brands. Originality/value There is a lack of previous research addressing individual differences in consumers’ online brand engagement that this paper investigates. Further, a generalized, dispositional variable such as brand schematicity has not been hitherto investigated in the context of consumers’ online behavior. Finally, this paper shows counter-intuitive effects of online brand engagement on brand purchase.