referral-incentive-designlisted

# Referral Incentive Design Design the reward structure of a customer refer-a-friend program. No canonical named framework exists for this discipline - referral is one letter inside measurement funnels like AARRR, not a design method. What exists is four decision variables, each with its own evidence base, worked through in order because each shapes the next: 1. **Sidedness** - reward the referrer, the friend, or both (the Reward-Me / Reward-You / Reward-Both taxonomy, Ryu & Feick, _Journal of Marketing_ 2007). 2. **Reward type** - cash, account credit, discount, product value, status, or donation. 3. **Reward size** - anchored to gross margin, LTV, and CAC, with a floor set by non-monotonic response (a too-small reward performs worse than none). 4. **Payout trigger and tier structure** - when the reward fires, and whether rewards escalate with cumulative referrals. ## Interview Ask before recommending anything. One question per message; offer multiple-choice answers when possible. Skip a question only when the user already gave the answer. - Is the business B2B or B2C? Subscription or one-time purchase? Self-serve or sales-led? - What are the gross margin, average LTV (or first-year revenue), blended/paid CAC, and entry-plan price? - Do customers already recommend the product organically? Roughly what share of new customers arrive that way? - Will the referrer plausibly buy again (account credit has value to them), or not (only cash-equivalents do)? - For B2B: is the li