Do Free Samples Actually Increase Sales?
Do Free Samples Actually Increase Sales?
Key Takeaways
- Free samples increase sales, and the effect lasts longer than discounting. One study found households that received a sample bought 18% more from that brand over the following year than households that didn't.
- Sampling makes people want to give you something in return, but goodwill doesn't automatically become a sale (it could be a good review, for example). What seems to create sales is giving people enough of your product to judge it fairly.
- A good free sample isn't the most generous one, it's the one that gives someone a fair chance to make up their mind about your product.
- Sampling can still fail. It eats into sales if too few people go on to buy at full price, it stops paying for itself once costs climb too high, and results vary between brands in the same category.
- The right sample size is the smallest amount that lets someone use your product properly, more than once. For example, that's roughly 3–5 ml for a serum, 10 ml for a fragrance, and 50 ml for a spirit.
Browse our full range of small bottles or get in touch to find the right format for your sampling campaign.
Do Free Samples Actually Increase Sales?
Yes, free samples tend to increase sales in the short and long term.
A good example of this comes from a study published in the journal Marketing Science. Researchers found more than 4,000 households who regularly bought similar items at the supermarket and split them into two groups: one that received free samples of a product and one that received no free samples.
Both groups had their shopping tracked for a year before the samples went out and a year afterwards. Because the two groups started out alike, the researchers could put any difference between them down to the sample rather than anything else that might affect the results.
The households that received the sample went on to buy 18% more of the sampled brand's products over the following year than the households that got nothing.
In other words, it didn't just increase sales of the sampled product, it increased sales of the brand’s other products, too. What’s more, it did so for a year, which is a far longer bump in sales than you might expect from discounting.
For instance, when brands cut the price of a product, research shows that the increase in sales barely outlasts the offer itself, with purchases climbing while the price is down and settling back to normal once it goes up again. Coupons don't last much longer, with most of their effect landing in the first 12 weeks or so.
Why Do Free Samples Work?
Most articles investigating whether free samples increase sales give one answer: when someone gives you something for free, you feel the need to give them something in return. That is true, but it’s only half the picture, and it’s actually the half that matters less for sales.
Reciprocity: The Obligation to Give Something Back
Reciprocity is the pull people feel to return a favour. When someone gives you something for free, you end up with a nagging sense that you owe them, and that feeling doesn't go away until you've paid it back somehow.
One of the best demonstrations of this comes from a 1971 experiment at Stanford University. Students turned up expecting a study about art, and each one sat in a room with a man they believed was another student. The man was actually working for the researchers, though, and partway through, he left the room for a couple of minutes.
What happened next depended on which group the student was in. In the first, the man came back holding two bottles of Coca-Cola and handed one over, saying he'd bought one for himself and got one for the student too. In the second, he came back empty-handed and the researcher brought the drinks in instead. In the third, nobody got a drink.
Later on, the same man passed the student a note asking if they'd buy raffle tickets from him to help support his old school.
The students he had given a drink to bought nearly twice as many tickets as the students who got nothing, and the proportion who bought more than one ticket went from 25% to 58%.
The second group is what makes the study convincing. Those students got exactly the same free drink, but it came from the researcher rather than from the man selling the tickets, and their purchases didn't go up at all.
So it wasn't the drink putting people in a good mood or making them feel generous. It was specifically owing the person who had given them something for free.
Diagnosticity: Whether the Sample Tells You Enough to Judge
The second reason is diagnosticity, which is a technical way of asking: did the sample tell you enough to make up your mind?
A 2023 study was the first to test diagnosticity and reciprocity against each other. Researchers worked with a website that sends out free samples on behalf of beauty brands, and surveyed 307 people who had received one.
They asked two things:
- How much did the recipient feel they owed the brand?
- How well did the sample help the recipient judge the product?
The results showed that reciprocity and diagnosticity predicted different things. The people who felt they owed the brand left better reviews, but were no more likely to say they'd buy something. The people who felt the sample had told them enough to judge the product were more likely to buy, but no more likely to leave a glowing review.
In other words, reciprocity got the brand goodwill and diagnosticity got it sales. The researchers' explanation is that a review is a cheap way to say thank you and a purchase isn't. Or, stated differently, writing a few kind words costs you nothing, but spending £40 costs you . . . well . . . £40.
To get the most out of sampling marketing, then, it’s not enough to come across as generous, you also have to give someone enough of your product to properly make up their mind.
When Does Sampling Not Work?
Sampling marketing is an excellent way to get your product in people’s hands, but it doesn't always guarantee increased sales.
The first way it can fail is through what researchers call "cannibalisation". Some of the people who take your sample would have bought the product anyway, so the sample replaces a sale rather than creating one.
Sampling marketing only pays off if enough of the people who try your product for free go on to buy it at full price. If too few of them do, the free sampling eats into the sales you would have made without them.
The second is cost. Sampling can be expensive, and there is a point where it stops paying for itself. In one study of groceries, that point arrived when the cost of sampling passed roughly 15 times the unit price of the product. The exact number will be different for a fragrance or a spirit with higher margins, but the principle is the same: work out your ceiling before you commit.
The third is that results may vary more than you expect. Even when you do your due diligence, the outcomes of a sampling campaign might not match what a competitor saw doing something similar. For example, the same research from earlier that found sampling produced an 18% lift found different results for two brands in the same product category running the same type of promotion.
How Big Should a Product Sample Be?
The right sample size is the smallest amount that still lets someone judge your product properly, using it the way they normally would at least a couple of times.
| Product type | Sample size | Packaging | Why this size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jams, honey, preserves | 40–60 ml | Small glass jar | Enough for several servings, so someone tries it more than once before deciding. |
| Sauces, oils, dressings | 60–100 ml | Bottle | Enough to cook with, rather than just taste from a spoon. |
| Fragrance | 10 ml | Atomiser or roll-on | The industry standard is 2 ml, which gives 1–2 wears. That often isn't enough, because scent changes on skin over several hours and people need to live with it before they know. A 10 ml bottle gives around 1–2 weeks of wear and a fairer chance to judge it. |
| Serums and facial oils | 3–5 ml | Dropper bottle | Used a few drops at a time, so this covers a fortnight of daily use. |
| Facial creams and balms | 5–15 ml | Small jar | Applied more heavily than a serum, so it needs more volume to last the same fortnight. |
| Body creams and balms | 15–30 ml | Jar | A body product covers a much larger area, so a facial-sized sample would be gone in a couple of uses. |
| Candles | 4–9 cl | Candle jar | Enough wax for a few proper burns, so the scent has time to fill a room. |
| Spirits and liqueurs | 50–100 ml | Miniature bottle | A single measure, drunk the way someone normally would rather than a tasting sip. |
| Syrups and cordials | 50 ml | Miniature bottle | Diluted before drinking, so this makes several servings. |
The Bottom Line on Whether Free Samples Increase Sales
Free samples increase sales, and the lift lasts longer than a discount does. But the reason they work isn't just that people feel they owe you, it’s that a sample lets someone find out whether your product is right for them, which is what really drives people to buy your products.
To maximise the return from sampling, then, you should give people enough product to make a real judgement, in a format that reflects how the product is actually used, and no more than that.
There's no single reliable figure, and you should be cautious of the ones that circulate online, because most trace back to marketing agency pages rather than research. Scientific studies measure incremental sales instead. One experiment found an 18% increase in brand sales in the year following a sampling promotion, compared with a matched control group.
For long-term sales, generally yes. Coupon effects tend to fade within about 12 weeks, while sampling effects have been measured up to a year later. Sampling also avoids training customers to wait for a lower price, since it adds value instead of cutting it.
Often more so than for large ones. Sampling works by converting people who wouldn't otherwise try you, and smaller brands have more of those people left to convert.