Covering diffusion costs in general social networks

Develop a mechanism for sales promotions and information diffusion in general social networks that incorporates non-zero diffusion or transfer costs for inviting neighbours and guarantees that buyers’ promotion costs are covered.

Background

Throughout the paper the mechanism assumes that inviting neighbours incurs no cost. The authors note that, in practice, invitations or promotions may require effort or monetary expenditure, which necessitates mechanisms that explicitly account for these costs.

They reference prior work that studies a special social network with public diffusion/transfer costs, indicating that while some progress exists under restrictive structures, extending cost coverage to general networks remains unresolved.