 Me and you and everyone we know: An empirical analysis of local network effects in mobile communicationsNicoletta Corrocher and Lorenzo Zirulia Telecommunications Policy, vol. 33, issue 1-2, 68-79 Abstract: This paper investigates the importance that consumers assign to local network effects, i.e. the extent to which they take account of their contacts' mobile operators when choosing a provider for themselves. The authors identify individual characteristics that affect the importance consumers attach to local network effects. The study relies on a survey of 193 Italian students. The results show that consumers are highly heterogeneous with respect to the importance they give to the operators chosen by their friends/family members in choosing which provider to use. This heterogeneity is associated with individual innovativeness and patterns of mobile phone usage. For instance, consumers who are more interested in local network effects are typically more-aware users, who use voice services quite intensively. These consumers, who pay attention to local network effects, spend comparatively little proportional to the intensity of their mobile usage. Keywords: Mobile; communications; Local; network; effects; Consumers'; heterogeneity; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:telpol:v:33:y::i:1-2:p:68-79 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier |
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