COMPETITION IN A SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Erika Fille Legara (), Anthony Longjas and Rene Batac
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Erika Fille Legara: National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, The Philippines
Anthony Longjas: National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, The Philippines
Rene Batac: National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, The Philippines

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), 2009, vol. 20, issue 01, 1-7

Abstract: Complex adaptive agents develop strategies in the presence of competition. In modern human societies, there is an inherent sense of locality when describing inter-agent dynamics because of its network structure. One then wonders whether the traditional advertising schemes that are globally publicized and target random individuals are as effective in attracting a larger portion of the population as those that take advantage of local neighborhoods, such as "word-of-mouth" marketing schemes. Here, we demonstrate using a differential equation model that schemes targeting local cliques within the network are more successful at gaining a larger share of the population than those that target users randomly at a global scale (e.g., television commercials, print ads, etc.). This suggests that success in the competition is dependent not only on thenumber of individualsin the population but also onhow they are connectedin the network. We further show that the model is general in nature by considering examples of competition dynamics, particularly those of business competition and language death.

Keywords: Social and economic systems; networks and genealogical trees; other areas of applied and interdisciplinary physics; 89.65.-s; 89.75.Hc; 89.00.00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1142/S0129183109013406

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