The role of critical mass in establishing a successful network market: An experimental investigationAuthor-Name: Ruffle, Bradley J

Avi Weiss and Amir Etziony

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2015, vol. 58, issue C, 101-110

Abstract: A network market is a market in which the benefit each consumer derives from a good is an increasing function of the number of consumers who own the same or similar goods. A major obstacle that plagues the introduction of a network good is the ability to reach critical mass, namely, the minimum number of buyers required to render purchase worthwhile. This can be likened to a coordination game with multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria. Through a series of experiments, we study consumers' ability to coordinate on purchasing the network good. Our results highlight the central importance of the size of the critical mass. Neither an improved reward-risk ratio through lower prices nor previous success at a lower critical mass facilitates the establishment of a network market when the critical mass is sufficiently high.

Keywords: Experimental economics; Network goods; Coordination game; Critical mass (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 L19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:58:y:2015:i:c:p:101-110

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2015.08.001

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