Many firms capitalize on their customers' social networks to improve the
success rate of their new products. In this article, the authors
analyze the dynamic effects of social influence and direct marketing on
the adoption of a new high-technology product. Social influence is
likely to play a role because the decision to adopt a high-involvement
product requires extensive information gathering from various sources.
The authors use call detail records to construct ego networks for a
large sample of customers of a Dutch mobile telecommunications operator.
Using a fractional polynomial hazard approach to model adoption timing
and multiple social influence variables, they provide a fine-grained
analysis of social influence. They show that the effect of social
influence from cumulative adoptions in a customer's network decreases
from the product introduction onward, whereas the influence of recent
adoptions remains constant. The effect of direct marketing is also
positive and decreases from the product introduction onward. This study
provides new insights into the adoption of high-technology products by
analyzing dynamic effects of social influence and direct marketing
simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]