新产品社会化营销的种子策略——基于关键用户识别与网络扩散的仿真研究

Seeding Strategies for New Product’s Social Media Marketing——A Simulation Research Based on the Identification of Key Users and Network Diffusion

种子策略是借助关键用户的人际口碑和社会影响力来加速新产品扩散的一种营销策略,它被广泛应用于新产品的市场导入和推广。社会化媒体营销的兴起为决策者观察和利用社会网络特征,实施种子策略提供了新的机会,但现实难题是如何利用社会传染影响机制和社交网络中的关系特征数据来指导种子用户的识别、筛选、策略实施及策略效果评估,以支持种子策略的设计和改进。本文构建了“理论—方法—实践—绩效评估”的框架,提出了一个适用于社会化营销的种子用户决策方法论,旨在指导管理者进行科学的种子营销决策。论文首先厘清了社会网络与创新扩散的基础理论,然后界定了关键用户的概念及识别方法,最后采用创新扩散的网络模型来模拟扩散过程,以及评估种子策略的扩散绩效。实例研究以经典数据集中的新产品扩散为例,探讨了如何找到有最佳扩散绩效的关键用户集的实验过程,以及在不同情境下实施种子策略后的扩散效果。研究发现:(1)采用基于社会网络群组层级的方法识别关键用户,对新产品在早期市场上的扩散更有利;(2)具有高连通性和低冗余性结构特征的网络更有利于新产品的扩散;(3)不同的社会影响机制对新产品扩散绩效的影响具有显著差异。(4)种子用户对创新扩散过程的价值贡献呈边际递减趋势。

Utilizing the word-of-mouth and social influences of key users in the social network, seeding strategies have already been successfully applied to the promotion of new products.The rising popularity of social media marketing provides marketers with the opportunities to observe and exploit the characteristics of massive social networks, so that better seeding strategies could be implemented.However, there is limited research on the design of a unifying methodology framework for identifying seeding users and evaluating their values to the diffusion of innovation.Our essay’s major contributions are summarized as follows.First, we proposed a basic theoretical framework for the selection of seeding users by identifying key users in the social network.The process is iterative, in the sense that the quality of diffusion is monitored to dynamically adjust the seeding strategy.Then, we designed simulation experiments to validate our framework under a variety of circumstances.We discovered that seeding strategies which utilized group-level central information within a social network are effective in the early stage of the process of the diffusion of new product, and that network structures with high connectivity and low redundancy can facilitate the spread of innovation.While seeding users are central in initiating the diffusion, their values diminish marginally as the market saturates.Finally, we found that social influence mechanisms can significantly affect the performance of new product’s diffusion.