When to ask for a review: An empirical analysis of online review request timing for different product types

The elicitation of online reviews has been extensively studied in the literature, reflecting the important role of reviews in boosting online business performance. While monetary and non-monetary incentives and social norms have received much attention, the timing of review requests has not. To address this gap, our study examines the effect of the timing of the review requests on the response rate. We collect a unique and extensive dataset, consisting of 22.3 million requests and 2.3 million reviews, from Trusted Shops, one of Europe’s largest online shop certifiers and review platforms. With the dataset, we examine how the timing of the review request after the purchase is associated with whether customers write online reviews. We identify two peaks during the day, namely around noon and early evening, associated with a substantially higher response rate. We further find that the probability of receiving a review decreases as the time between the purchase and the request increases. Moreover, our study reveals differences in customer response behaviors for shops offering different types of products, suggesting that online shops offering high-involvement (vs. low-involvement), experience (vs. search), or hedonic (vs. utilitarian) goods should wait longer before sending out review requests to customers, post-purchase. Our fine-grained analysis contributes to a novel aspect of the online review literature. It supports online shops and review platform operators in deciding when to send out review requests to customers.