دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی ظهور شبکه های اجتماعی الکترونیکی و پیامدهای تبلیغاتی - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

The raise of modern digital communication technologies, most notably electronic social networks, transforms structures through which consumers interact with one another. In this paper we distinguish between two channels through which product promotion affects sales. The direct channel always positively affects consumers' pre-purchase valuation. The indirect channel goes through word-of-mouth (WoM) and can be either positive or negative. The sentiment contained in WoM is generated by the complex interaction process and depends on the aggressiveness of the advertising campaign. We investigate the implications of the current changes in social network architectures for the effectiveness of the indirect channel. We show that changes in social structures have increased the efficiency of WoM across a host of industries. Our results call for “smart” advertising policies.

6. Discussion

The findings concerning the effects of network density and topology in previous section have an important implication. Our results imply that changing social network architectures from sparse small worlds to dense scale free structures has increased the efficiency of WoM. In modern days a single overly negative review (which can be induced by super-high pre-purchase expectations) can hurt product sales. With time, the indirect channel gets to dominate the direct (positive) channel for lower levels of advertising efforts. Recent literature does indeed point toward the large power of WoM (Hewett et al., 2015; Trusov et al., 2009).

This insight does not depend on whether we use dynamic or static WoM network. Even though have found that dynamic and static WoM network scenarios are statistically different,16 there is no qualitative differences across the two. Thus, we can conclude that over-advertising trap is universal and exists for wide range of products – products with repetitive, as well as with non-repetitive purchases. This universal trend has complicated product innovation processes for modern companies. Today's companies cannot quietly try out their product on small scale in order to elicit important feedback for perfecting them. Companies are forced to look out remote geographical areas in order to carry out this task (Economist, 2015). Some of the products are too hot even for a great geographical distance. Even very powerful companies cannot pull off bringing such products prematurely on the market, as demonstrated by cases of Fire Phone (Amazon), Maps (Apple) or Google Glass (Google).