Can Friends Seed More Buzz and Adoption"

Vineet Kumar and K. Sudhir ()
Additional contact information
Vineet Kumar: School of Management, Yale University
K. Sudhir: Cowles Foundation & School of Management, Yale University, https://faculty.som.yale.edu/ksudhir/

No 2178, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: A critical element of word of mouth (WOM) or buzz marketing is to identify seeds, often central actors with high degree in the social network. Seed identification typically requires data on the full network structure, which is often unavailable. We therefore examine the impact of WOM seeding strategies motivated by the friendship paradox to obtain more central nodes without knowing network structure. But higher-degree nodes may communicate less with neighbors; therefore whether friendship paradox motivated seeding strategies increase or reduce WOM and adoption remains an empirical question. We develop and estimate a model of WOM and adoption using data on microfinance adoption across 43 villages in India for which we have data on social networks. Counterfactuals show that the proposed seeding strategies are about 15-20% more effective than random seeding in increasing adoption. Remarkably, they are also about 5-11% more effective than opinion leader seeding, and are relative more effective when we have fewer seeds.

Keywords: Word of mouth; Networks; seeding; Friendship paradox; Product adoption; diffusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D85 G21 L14 O12 O16 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2019-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mkt and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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