Related papers: Bring a friend! Privately or Publicly?
We analyze the following group learning problem in the context of opinion diffusion: Consider a network with $M$ users, each facing $N$ options. In a discrete time setting, at each time step, each user chooses $K$ out of the $N$ options,…
We investigate a dynamic model of network marketing in a small-world network structure artificially constructed similarly to the Watts-Strogatz network model. Different from the traditional marketing, consumers can also play the role of the…
Advancements in service sector and growing online platforms are intensifying the information exchange between customers through (electronic) word-of-mouth (WoM). The information obtained by WoM has shown to be a dominant factor in…
When selling information products, the seller can provide some free partial information to change people's valuations so that the overall revenue can possibly be increased. We study the general problem of advertising information products by…
We study the problems of pricing an indivisible product to consumers who are embedded in a given social network. The goal is to maximize the revenue of the seller. We assume impatient consumers who buy the product as soon as the seller…
We present an analysis of a person-to-person recommendation network, consisting of 4 million people who made 16 million recommendations on half a million products. We observe the propagation of recommendations and the cascade sizes, which…
This paper addresses the discount pricing in word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. A new discount strategy known as the Infection-Based Discount (IBD) strategy is proposed. The basic idea of the IBD strategy lies in that each customer enjoys a…
We study the optimal pricing strategies of a monopolist selling a divisible good (service) to consumers that are embedded in a social network. A key feature of our model is that consumers experience a (positive) local network effect. In…
We study price-discrimination games between buyers and a seller where privacy arises endogenously--that is, utility maximization yields equilibrium strategies where privacy occurs naturally. In this game, buyers with a high valuation for a…
This paper studies an auction design problem for a seller to sell a commodity in a social network, where each individual (the seller or a buyer) can only communicate with her neighbors. The challenge to the seller is to design a mechanism…
The performance of an energy system under a real-time pricing mechanism depends on the consumption behavior of its customers, which involves uncertainties. In this paper, we consider a system operator that charges its customers with a…
A monopolist seller of multiple goods screens a buyer whose type is initially unknown to both but drawn from a commonly known distribution. The buyer privately learns about his type via a signal. We derive the seller's optimal mechanism in…
Social goods are goods that grant value not only to their owners but also to the owners' surroundings, be it their families, friends or office mates. The benefit a non-owner derives from the good is affected by many factors, including the…
This paper considers incentives to provide goods that are partially shareable along social links. We introduce a model in which each individual in a social network not only decides how much of a shareable good to provide, but also decides…
Designing auctions to incentivize buyers to invite new buyers via their social connections is a new trend in mechanism design. The challenge is that buyers are competitors and we need to design proper incentives for them to invite each…
Increasingly large trip demands have strained urban transportation capacity, which consequently leads to traffic congestion and rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions. In this work, we focus on achieving sustainable transportation by…
Campaigners are increasingly using online social networking platforms for promoting products, ideas and information. A popular method of promoting a product or even an idea is incentivizing individuals to evangelize the idea vigorously by…
Native advertising is one of the fastest growing areas of online promotion. After reviewing extant literature via EBSCOhost database, this study draws on Persuasion Knowledge Model and develops a theoretical framework which facilitates a…
Social networks are commonly used for marketing purposes. For example, free samples of a product can be given to a few influential social network users (or "seed nodes"), with the hope that they will convince their friends to buy it. One…
Social media are extensively used in today's world, and facilitate quick and easy sharing of information, which makes them a good way to advertise products. Influencers of a social media network, owing to their massive popularity, provide a…