50,745 research outputs found
Network Marketing on a Small-World Network
We investigate a dynamic model of network marketing in a small-world network
structure artificially constructed similarly to the Watts-Strogatz network
model. Different from the traditional marketing, consumers can also play the
role of the manufacturer's selling agents in network marketing, which is
stimulated by the referral fee the manufacturer offers. As the wiring
probability is increased from zero to unity, the network changes from
the one-dimensional regular directed network to the star network where all but
one player are connected to one consumer. The price of the product and the
referral fee are used as free parameters to maximize the profit of the
manufacturer. It is observed that at the maximized profit is
constant independent of the network size while at , it
increases linearly with . This is in parallel to the small-world transition.
It is also revealed that while the optimal value of stays at an almost
constant level in a broad range of , that of is sensitive to a
change in the network structure. The consumer surplus is also studied and
discussed.Comment: 12 pages, to appear in Physica
The Dynamics of Viral Marketing
We present an analysis of a person-to-person recommendation network,
consisting of 4 million people who made 16 million recommendations on half a
million products. We observe the propagation of recommendations and the cascade
sizes, which we explain by a simple stochastic model. We analyze how user
behavior varies within user communities defined by a recommendation network.
Product purchases follow a 'long tail' where a significant share of purchases
belongs to rarely sold items. We establish how the recommendation network grows
over time and how effective it is from the viewpoint of the sender and receiver
of the recommendations. While on average recommendations are not very effective
at inducing purchases and do not spread very far, we present a model that
successfully identifies communities, product and pricing categories for which
viral marketing seems to be very effective
Predicting mobile advertising response using consumer colocation networks
Building on results from economics and consumer behavior, the authors theorize that consumers' movement patterns are informative of their product preferences, and this study proposes that marketers monetize this information using dynamic networks that capture colocation events (when consumers appear at the same place at approximately the same time). To support this theory, the authors study mobile advertising response in a panel of 217 subscribers. The data set spans three months during which participants were sent mobile coupons from retailers in various product categories through a smartphone application. The data contain coupon conversions, demographic and psychographic information, and information on the hourly GPS location of participants and on their social ties in the form of referrals. The authors find a significant positive relationship between colocated consumers' response to coupons in the same product category. In addition, they show that incorporating consumers' location information can increase the accuracy of predicting the most likely conversions by 19%. These findings have important practical implications for marketers engaging in the fast-growing location-based mobile advertising industry
eWOM & Referrals in Social Network Services
If a few decades ago the development of the Internet was instrumental in the interconnection between markets, nowadays the services provided by Web 2.0, such as social network sites (SNS) are the cutting edge. A proof of this trend is the exponential growth of social network users. The main objective of this work is to explore the mechanisms that promote the transmission and reception (WOM and referrals) of online opinions, in the context of the
SNS, by buyers of travel services. The research includes some research lines: technology acceptance model (TAM), Social Identification Theory and Word-of-Mouth communication in virtual environment (eWOM). Based on these theories an explicative model has been proposed applying SEM analysis to a sample of SNS users’ of tourist service buyers. The results support the majority of the hypotheses and some relevant practical and theoretical
implications have been pointed out for tourist managers
Attention on Weak Ties in Social and Communication Networks
Granovetter's weak tie theory of social networks is built around two central
hypotheses. The first states that strong social ties carry the large majority
of interaction events; the second maintains that weak social ties, although
less active, are often relevant for the exchange of especially important
information (e.g., about potential new jobs in Granovetter's work). While
several empirical studies have provided support for the first hypothesis, the
second has been the object of far less scrutiny. A possible reason is that it
involves notions relative to the nature and importance of the information that
are hard to quantify and measure, especially in large scale studies. Here, we
search for empirical validation of both Granovetter's hypotheses. We find clear
empirical support for the first. We also provide empirical evidence and a
quantitative interpretation for the second. We show that attention, measured as
the fraction of interactions devoted to a particular social connection, is high
on weak ties --- possibly reflecting the postulated informational purposes of
such ties --- but also on very strong ties. Data from online social media and
mobile communication reveal network-dependent mixtures of these two effects on
the basis of a platform's typical usage. Our results establish a clear
relationships between attention, importance, and strength of social links, and
could lead to improved algorithms to prioritize social media content
The Grass Is Not Always Greener: A Look at National Health Care Systems Around the World
Critics of the U.S. health care system frequently point to other countries as models for reform. They point out that many countries spend far less on health care than the United States yet seem to enjoy better health outcomes. The United States should follow the lead of those countries, the critics say, and adopt a government- run, national health care system. However, a closer look shows that nearly all health care systems worldwide are wrestling with problems of rising costs and lack of access to care. There is no single international model for national health care, of course. Countries vary dramatically in the degree of central control, regulation, and cost sharing they impose, and in the role of private insurance. Still, overall trends from national health care systems around the world suggest the following: Health insurance does not mean universal access to health care. In practice, many countries promise universal coverage but ration care or have long waiting lists for treatment. Rising health care costs are not a uniquely American phenomenon. Although other countries spend considerably less than the United States on health care, both as a percentage of GDP and per capita, costs are rising almost everywhere, leading to budget deficits, tax increases, and benefit reductions. In countries weighted heavily toward government control, people are most likely to face waiting lists, rationing, restrictions on physician choice, and other obstacles to care. Countries with more effective national health care systems are successful to the degree that they incorporate market mechanisms such as competition, cost sharing, market prices, and consumer choice, and eschew centralized government control. Although no country with a national health care system is contemplating abandoning universal coverage, the broad and growing trend is to move away from centralized government control and to introduce more market-oriented features. The answer then to America's health care problems lies not in heading down the road to national health care but in learning from the experiences of other countries, which demonstrate the failure of centralized command and control and the benefits of increasing consumer incentives and choice
- …