 Externalities, Social Value and Word of Mouth: Notions of Public Economics on NetworksPier-Andre Bouchard St-Amant No 274621, Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics Abstract: I examine an environment where advertisers can ”seed” word-of-mouth advertising by providing initial information about a product to specific users of a social network. Discussion over a social network generates spillover effects for firms when consumers can use the social network to inform each other about products. When a firm can exploit a social network’s structure, it can increase its sales. However, when the network formation process is costly, firms free-ride on such costs at the expense of agents on the network. If agents can form coalitions, I show that they can recoup the value of this externality by charging a toll. When users actively modify the information, generating word-of-mouth advertising about a product provides a ”social value.” This social value stems from the discussions that agents have about the product, without any intervention. Since this process occurs regardless of the firm’s actions, the firm cannot capture such valuation. The opinion leaders, or highly regarded agents on the network, play a key role in the formation of this social value. Keywords: Financial; Economics (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:ags:quedwp:274621 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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