This study reviews and synthesizes the literature on the role of influentials and the influence process in new product diffusion from a marketing management perspective. Influentials are a broad category of consumers who play important roles in new product diffusion by considerably influencing...

This study explores the profit impact of seeding programs — giving away free new products to enhance new product diffusion. We conducted extensive agent-based simulation experiments using empirical social connectivity data from five consumer social networks. The findings suggest that the...