Did They Tell Their Friends? - Using Social Network Analysis to Detect Contagion Processes

39 Pages Posted: 12 Feb 2008

See all articles by Christian Barrot

Christian Barrot

Kühne Logistics University - THE KLU; Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel, Institute for Innovation Research

Sönke Albers

Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet at Kiel

Date Written: February 2008

Abstract

Social contagion processes such as word-of-mouth (WOM) are widely regarded as key success factors for innovation diffusion. Aspects of these processes have been thoroughly explored in empirical studies on the actor or dyad levels of analysis. While such studies offer valuable insight into the motivations and contents of WOM, they are not able to include social network structures in their analysis. Contagion processes, however, require an underlying social networks infrastructure to unfold their potential for innovation diffusion. Although marketing managers strongly believe in social contagion processes, and studies on both actor and dyad levels strongly suggest their existence, marketing scientists have been unable to find conclusive evidence of such effects in network-level studies, which are most appropriate for this purpose.

To address this research gap, we propose a new approach for empirical research in this field: the quantitative determination of communication activity, reach, speed, and epidemicity of observed diffusion processes by using social network analysis. We apply this approach empirically by analyzing anonymized customer data from an innovative telecommunications provider. The resulting social network of adopters, consisting of 55,065 customers and 7.8 million individual phone calls, is analyzed and compared to simulated random networks of similar dimensions. We find strong support for significant social contagion influences on adoption decisions and an epidemic pattern of innovation diffusion.

Keywords: Diffusion, Social Networks, Telecommunications, Social Contagion, Word-of-Mouth

Suggested Citation

Barrot, Christian and Albers, Sönke, Did They Tell Their Friends? - Using Social Network Analysis to Detect Contagion Processes (February 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1091205 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1091205

Christian Barrot (Contact Author)

Kühne Logistics University - THE KLU ( email )

Großer Grasbrook 17
Hamburg, 20457
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.the-klu.org/

Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel, Institute for Innovation Research ( email )

Westring 425
D-24118 Kiel
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.bwl.uni-kiel.de/bwlinstitute/Innovation-Marketing/new/en/homepage/

Sönke Albers

Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet at Kiel ( email )

D-24098 Kiel
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
978
Abstract Views
4,377
Rank
43,355
PlumX Metrics