Marketing in Random Networks

Abstract: Viral marketing takes advantage of preexisting social networks among customers to achieve large changes in behaviour. Models of influence spread have been studied in a number of domains, including the effect of "word of mouth" in the promotion of new products or the diffusion of technologies. A social network can be represented by a graph where the nodes are individuals and the edges indicate a form of social relationship. The flow of influence through this network can be thought of as an increasing process of active nodes: as individuals become aware of new technologies, they have the potential to pass them on to their neighbours. The goal of marketing is to trigger a large cascade of adoptions. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model that allows to analyze the dynamics of the cascading sequence of nodes switching to the new technology. To this end we describe a continuous-time and a discrete-time models and analyse the proportion of nodes that adopt the new technology over time.