IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/the/publsh/5886.html

Adoption epidemics and viral marketing

Author

Listed:
  • McAdams, David

    (Fuqua School of Business and Economics Department, Duke University)

  • Song, Yangbo

    (School of Management and Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen))

Abstract

An innovation (e.g., new product or idea) spreads like a virus, transmitted by those who have previously adopted it. Agents update their beliefs about innovation quality based on private signals and when they hear about the innovation. We characterize equilibrium adoption dynamics and the resulting lifecycle of virally-spread innovations. Herding on adoption can occur but only early in the innovation lifecycle, and adoption eventually ceases for all virally-spread innovations. A producer capable of advertising directly to consumers finds it optimal to wait and allow awareness to grow virally initially after launch.

Suggested Citation

  • McAdams, David & Song, Yangbo, 2025. "Adoption epidemics and viral marketing," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 20(2), May.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:5886
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20250453/41949/1279
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthew O. Jackson & Suraj Malladi & David McAdams, 2022. "Learning through the grapevine and the impact of the breadth and depth of social networks," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 119(34), pages 2205549119-, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric Gao, 2025. "Seeding an Uncertain Technology," Papers 2506.10340, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Miguel Risco & Manuel Lleonart-Anguix, 2024. "Feed for good? On the effects of personalization algorithms in social media platforms," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_580v2, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany, revised Dec 2024.
    2. Valentin Guigon & Marie Claire Villeval & Jean-Claude Dreher, 2024. "Metacognition biases information seeking in assessing ambiguous news," Post-Print hal-04848999, HAL.
    3. Miguel Risco & Manuel Lleonart-Anguix, 2024. "Feed for good? On the effects of personalization algorithms in social platforms," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_580, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    4. Hsu, Chin-Chia & Ajorlou, Amir & Jadbabaie, Ali, 2025. "A game-theoretic model of misinformation spread on social networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 386-407.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:the:publsh:5886. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Editor Theoretical Economics The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Editor Theoretical Economics to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econtheory.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.