Cross-Border Product Adoption: Individual Imports, Migrant Networks, and Domestic Retailers

This paper studies how new varieties enter markets and become locally available. We provide causal evidence of demand externalities that operate in two steps. First, information about new varieties diffuses directly through real-world social ties among consumers. Combining the instrument with linked consumer--retailer data and a self-conducted retailer survey, we show that this response reflects learning about latent demand for varieties not yet stocked locally. Together, social diffusion and retailer learning generate demand multipliers that reshape local product availability and expand access to global variety.