2004/06/28 by Tom Erez, Erez, Tom, Sarit Moldovan +3
Decision Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Innovation Diffusion and Forecasting #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) #cond-mat.other
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0406695
17 pages, 5 figures, to be published in a book called "Handbook Research on of Nature Inspired Computing for Economy and Management"
openalex publication_date 2004/06/28 · arxiv created 2005/11/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Many new products fail, despite preliminary market surveys having determined considerable potential market share. This effect is too systematic to be attributed to bad luck. We suggest an explanation by presenting a new percolation theory model for product propagation, where agents interact over a social network. In our model, agents who do not adopt the product spread negative word of mouth to their neighbors, and so their neighborhood becomes less susceptible to the product. The result is a dramatic increase in the percolation threshold. When the effect of negative word of mouth is strong enough, it is shown to block any product from spreading to a significant fraction of the network. So, rather then being rejected by a large fraction of the agents, the product gets blocked by the rejection of a negligible fraction of the potential market. The rest of the potential buyers do not adopt the product because they are never exposed to it: the negative word of mouth spread by initial rejectors suffocates the diffusion by negatively affecting the immediate neighborhood of the propagation front.