Peer influence through word-of-mouth (WOM) plays an important role in many information systems but identification of causal effects is challenging. We identify causal WOM effects in the empirical setting of game adoption in a social network for gamers by exploiting differences in individuals’...

The proliferation of the Internet and the latest mobile communication technologies have given rise to new forms of communication that made it easier for sellers as well as consumers to communicate and conduct business in real time and in virtual space with manufacturers, retailers or among each...

Word-of-mouth (WOM) plays an increasingly important role today in shaping consumers' attitudes and buying behaviors. Prior work in marketing has mainly focused on the aggregate impact of WOM on product sales as well as the generation of WOM. Very little attention has been paid to the consumption...

The social media phenomenon has provided tremendous opportunities for self-promotion. From global pop star, Psy, reaching over 1.2 billion YouTube viewers (as of this writing) with his smash hit, “Gangnam Style” to recent college graduates “getting themselves out there” in the job market...

This paper estimates a dynamic model of user behavior in a social network site using unique data on the daily login activity of a sample of members of MySpace.com. We view a social network as a stock of capital that yields a flow of utilities over time by creating interactions between the site...

Marketers distinguish between three types of media: paid (e.g., advertising), owned (e.g., company website), and earned (e.g., publicity). The effects of paid media on sales have been extensively covered in the marketing literature. The effects of earned media, however, have received limited...

Social media has become a communications platform for brands to interact with customers. Few studies have tested how more than 50 million US Hispanics use social media. This paper investigates how Hispanics interact with social media, such as Facebook, and examines how Hispanics spend more on...

The purpose of this paper is to uncover how East Germans reacted to product shortages following product abundance immediately after reunification and over time. The authors conduct in-depth interviews to document the stories of the individuals during this time period. Our data analysis reveals...

The adoption and use of a professional social media network by franchise chains is the focus of this paper. We draw on resource-based theory, institutional economic theories of incentives and externalities and multidisciplinary literatures on franchising, innovation adoption and...

This research investigates the discontinuous diffusion process associated with User Generated Content (UGC). Specifically, we examine the daily views for a sample of videos posted on YouTube. We assume that the audience for each video is drawn from two segments that represent the initial...