Redes sociales

Diffusion dynamics in small-world networks with heterogeneous consumers

Diffusions of new products and technologies through social networks can be formalized as spreading of infectious diseases. However, while epidemiological models describe infection in terms of transmissibility and susceptibility, we propose a diffusion model that explicitly includes consumer decision-making affected by social influences and word-of-mouth processes. In our computational model consumers’ probability of adoption depends on the external marketing effort and on the internal influence that each consumer perceives in his/her personal social networks. Maintaining a given marketing effort and assuming its effect on the probability of adoption as linear, we can study how the speed of the diffusion depends on the network structure and on consumer heterogeneity. First, we show that the speed of diffusion changes with the degree of randomness in the network. The speed is low in regular networks, it increases in small-world networks and finally it becomes low again in random networks. Second, we show that heterogeneity helps the diffusion. Alteris paribus and varying the degree of heterogeneity in the population of agents results show that the more heterogeneous the population, the faster the speed of the diffusion. These results contribute to marketing strategies for the launch and the dissemination of new products and technologies.

International Network for Social Network Analysis

INSNA is the professional association for researchers interested in social network analysis.

Journal of Social Structure (JoSS)

The Journal of Social Structure (JoSS) is an electronic journal of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA). It is designed to facilitate timely dissemination of state-of-the-art results in the interdisciplinary research area of social structure. It publishes empirical, theoretical and methodological articles. JoSS publishes manuscripts that are focused on social structure-on the patterning of social linkages among actors. These actors could be comprised of different types or levels or analysis, such as animals, humans, artificial agents, groups or organizations. INSNA was founded on the premise that the behavior and lives of social entities are affected by their position in the overall social structure. By examining the etiology and consequences of structural forms overall, of the location of entities within these structures, and of the formation and dynamics of ties that make up these structures, INSNA hopes to learn about the parts of behavior that are uniquely social. Because it is a paperless journal, JoSS enables and encourages full use of electronic media in the analysis and presentation of research results. Authors are encouraged to use multiple formats to convey important relationships, concepts, theories, models and results. Such formats include but are not limited to the generation of images that use color, motion, three dimensional representation, and user-interactive features, all embedded within the article.