Prior literature has focused primarily on offline sampling of physical goods and online sampling of information goods, whereas a new form of sampling campaign—physical goods sampling via online channels—receives little attention. Leveraging a rich data set from Taobao, a large e-commerce...

Despite the popular use of product sampling as a promotional strategy by retailers, existing research has largely focused on offline sampling of physical goods and online sampling of information goods but overlooked online sampling of physical goods. We argue that, in the context of online...