Seeding strategies for new product launch: The role of negative word-of-mouth
Authored by Hai-hua Hu, Fang Cui, Wen-tian Cui, Ying Xie
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0206736
Sponsors:
Chinese National Natural Science Foundation
Platforms:
MATLAB
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Pseudocode
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206736#sec022
Abstract
When launching a new product, firms often give away free samples to seed
the market. This paper aims to identify the optimal seeding targets,
such as early adopters, social hubs, or randomly chosen consumers while
considering the presence of negative word-of-mouth (WOM). Using
agent-based modeling, it was found that seeding early adopters can
generate the highest profit and the largest market penetration, followed
by the social hubs and random consumers. Moreover, the results show that
seeding early adopters can be more beneficial for a low-quality product,
wherein adopters are more likely to spread negative WOM. These findings
challenge a widely accepted notion in the related research that social
hubs are often the most promising targets for seeding programs.
Tags
networks
Adoption
diffusion
Model
influentials
Social-influence
Consumers
Start
Empirical-analysis
Purchase