Viral Marketing in a Competitive and Dynamic Social Network

[[abstract]]藉由彼此間的連繫互動，消費者常會影響其它消費者的消費行為。病毒行銷利用這種消費者間會互相影響的行為，鼓勵消費者將產品訊息由一個消費者傳遞到另一個消費者，而使得產品訊息得以爆炸性地快速傳遞與影響。近年來，由於線上社會網路的快速成長, 病毒行銷已成為行銷領域中重要的概念與策略，引起許多討論。在病毒行銷中，一個有趣的問題自然是: 如果我們想使得訊息的擴散達到最大化，那麼我們應該選擇那些消費者作為廣告的起點呢? 這個影響最大化的問題，過去曾有相關研究進行討論。然而，他們的假設及論點卻過於簡化。例如，假設市場中只有一個產品而社會網路也是固定的。因此，在本研究計畫中，我們將探討如何在競爭及動態的社會網路中，選擇起點進行病毒行銷而使得訊息擴散得以最大化。[[abstract]]By virtue of interactions, consumers influence each other’s decisions in adopting a product or behavior. Viral marketing, which describes any strategy that encourages consumers to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence, therefore has drummed up significant buzz in marketing circles as the hot new initiative. An interesting question thus emerges: If we wish to maximize the size of a cascade, which subset of consumers should we target? Though previous researches shed light to this influence maximization problem, they assume that there is only one company introducing a product and the underlying social network is static. These views of social networks are highly idealistic. In this research, we therefore consider how an influence cascade can be conducted in a competitive and dynamic environmen