The effect of reward provision timing in mobile application platforms: A social exchange theory perspective

With the growing size of the food delivery mobile application market, reviews of restaurants are becoming more significant. As part of their marketing strategy, restaurants listed in Korean food delivery mobile applications such as Baemin and Yogiyo have come up with the Advance Review Reward Promotion (ARRP) in which rewards are given out before writing a review. Despite the perception of great loss accompanied by giving out rewards with uncertain promises from consumers, more and more restaurants are explosively expanding their ARRP, and restaurants not offering such reward promotions are considered rare. Based on extant literature, we hypothesized that the Traditional Review Reward Promotion (TRRP) in which rewards are given out after writing restaurant reviews and ARRP differ in terms of the quantity of reviews, the deviation of the quality of verbal information in reviews, and the quantity of reviews included visual information according to the timing of reward provision.