Reproducing stylized facts of word-of-mouth with a naturalistic multi-agent model

International audienceWord-of-mouth is the interpersonal process by which information about an innovation diffuses in a social system. Little empirical data is available from the field. Nevertheless, several stylized facts are identified and widely accepted. For instance, consumers actively search for information. It is also known that knowledge about incremental innovations diffuses quicker, because part of the knowledge is already available from previous innovations. Previous models applied to word-of-mouth do not reproduce these stylized facts. We propose a model compliant with these stylized facts, in which knowledge representation relies on associative networks, and whose communication protocol is based on social objects. Simulations illustrate the increased representativeness of the model by modeling active search for information and diffusion of incremental innovations. We also show an important change in the diffusion rate due to active search for information