Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design: A Randomized Trial of Peer Influence in Networks

TLDR

The study examines how firms can generate word‑of‑mouth peer influence and social contagion by embedding viral features into products and marketing campaigns. We conducted a randomized field experiment on Facebook involving 1.4 million friends of 9,687 users to econometrically assess the impact of various viral features. The experiment shows that viral features create identifiable peer influence and social contagion; passive‑broadcast features increase adoption by 246 % and generate more total peer adoption than active‑personalized features, which add only 98 % more influence but are used less frequently. Accepted by special‑issue editors Pradeep Chintagunta and Preyas Desai.

Abstract

We examine how firms can create word-of-mouth peer influence and social contagion by designing viral features into their products and marketing campaigns. To econometrically identify the effectiveness of different viral features in creating social contagion, we designed and conducted a randomized field experiment involving the 1.4 million friends of 9,687 experimental users on Facebook.com. We find that viral features generate econometrically identifiable peer influence and social contagion effects. More surprisingly, we find that passive-broadcast viral features generate a 246% increase in peer influence and social contagion, whereas adding active-personalized viral features generate only an additional 98% increase. Although active-personalized viral messages are more effective in encouraging adoption per message and are correlated with more user engagement and sustained product use, passive-broadcast messaging is used more often, generating more total peer adoption in the network. Our work provides a model for how randomized trials can identify peer influence in social networks. This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta and Preyas Desai, special issue editors. This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta and Preyas Desai, special issue editors.