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Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design Management Science 57(9
| Venue: | 2011 INFORMS 1639 Epsilon. 2009. Epsilon Q1 2009 email trends and |
| Citations: | 88 - 3 self |
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{Aral_creatingsocial,
author = {Sinan Aral and Dylan Walker},
title = {Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design Management Science 57(9},
booktitle = {2011 INFORMS 1639 Epsilon. 2009. Epsilon Q1 2009 email trends and},
year = {},
pages = {1623--1639}
}
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Abstract
We examine how firms can create word-of-mouth peer influence and social contagion by designing viralfeatures into their products and marketing campaigns. To econometrically identify the effectiveness of different viral features in creating social contagion, we designed and conducted a randomized field experiment involving the 1.4 million friends of 9,687 experimental users on Facebook.com. We find that viral features generate econometrically identifiable peer influence and social contagion effects. More surprisingly, we find that passive-broadcast viral features generate a 246 % increase in peer influence and social contagion, whereas adding active-personalized viral features generate only an additional 98 % increase. Although active-personalized viral messages are more effective in encouraging adoption per message and are correlated with more user engagement and sustained product use, passive-broadcast messaging is used more often, generating more total peer adoption in the network. Our work provides a model for how randomized trials can identify peer influence in social networks. Key words: peer influence; social contagion; social networks; viral marketing; viral product design; information systems; randomized experiment
Keyphrases
social contagion peer influence viral product design management science social network randomized trial randomized field experiment passive-broadcast messaging social contagion effect active-personalized viral feature identifiable peer influence different viral feature experimental user product use word-of-mouth peer influence viral marketing viral feature viral product design passive-broadcast viral feature user engagement information system active-personalized viral message key word marketing campaign total peer adoption
