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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14128
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| Title: | Viral Marketing: Identifying Likely Adopters Via Consumer Networks |
| Authors: | Hill, Shawndra
Provost, Foster
Volinsky, Chris |
| Keywords: | Viral marketing
word-of-mouth marketing
target marketing |
| Issue Date: | 2005 |
| Publisher: | Stern School of Business, New York University |
| Series/Report no.: | CeDER-05-21 |
| Abstract: | We investigate the hypothesis: those consumers who have communicated
with a customer of a particular service have increased likelihood of
adopting the service. We survey the diverse literature on such
"viral marketing," providing a categorization of the specific
research questions asked, the data analyzed, and the statistical methods
used. We highlight a striking gap in the literature: no prior study has
had both of the two key types of data necessary to provide direct
support for the hypothesis: data on communications between consumers,
and data on product adoption. We suggest a type of service for which
both types of data are available telecommunications services. Then, for
a particular telecommunication service, we show support for the
hypothesis. Specifically, we show three main results. 1) there is such a
"viral" effect and it is statistically significant, resulting
in take rates 3-5 times greater than a baseline group; 2) attributes
constructed from the consumer network can improve models for ranking of
targeted customers by likelihood of adoption, and 3) observing the
network allows the firm to target new customers that would have fallen
through the cracks, because they would not have been identified based
solely on the traditional set of attributes used for marketing by the
firm. We close with a discussion of challenges and opportunities for
research in this area. For example, can one determine whether the reason
for the viral effect is customer advocacy (e.g., via "word of
mouth") versus network-identified homophily? |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14128 |
| Appears in Collections: | CeDER Working Papers
IOMS: Information Systems Working Papers
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