Consumer Phase Shift Simulation Based on Social Psychology and Complex Networks

We have developed the methods for estimating how a new product or a new service will be accepted in contemporary society, considering the effects of word-of-mouth recommendations. These methods are based on a consumer phase shift modeling framework that consists of a consumer agent model and a social network model. Consumer agents, which are classified into four types and six phases, exchange information with each other on a social network. Model parameters were acquired by surveys regarding several new services. These surveys were designed using the snowball sampling technique. We also developed a network generation procedure, applying the idea of complex networks. The multi-agent simulation results proved the feasibility of this framework.