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Abstract
Consumer purchasing decision making has been of great interest to researchers and practitioners
for improving strategic marketing policies and gaining a competitive advantage in the market.
Traditional market models generally concentrate on single individuals rather than taking social
interactions into account. However, individuals are tied to one another with invisible bonds and the
influence an individual receives from others, affects her purchasing decision which is known as
word of mouth (WOM) effect. In this process, some people have greater influence on other
consumers’ buying decisions that are known as opinion leaders.
A new evolving modeling approach, agent-based modeling enables researchers to build models
where individual entities and their interactions are directly represented.
In this paper, we aim to build an agent-based simulation model for a technological product in a
monopolistic artificial market. In particular, we will try to assess the efficiency and profitability of
different marketing strategies consisting of different price, promotion, quality levels and different
number of targeted opinion leaders where consumers are subject to WOM effects . In the presence
of WOM, product’s quality is found to be the most significant factor affecting the profit of the
company due to the positive WOM effect disseminated by the consumers.
Keywords: Consumer network, word of mouth, marketing strategy, agent based modeling
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2011 Çiğdem Karakaya, Bertan Badur and Can Aytekin. This is an open access article distributed
under the Creative Commons Attribution License unported 3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, provided that original work is properly cited. Contact author: Çiğdem
Karakaya e-maill: cigdem.karakaya@boun.edu.tr
Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies 2
and how a consumer decides to acquire, use Kirby and Marsden (2006) assert that recent
and dispose the product are essential researches have scientifically proven that,
questions for understanding consumer high levels of positive WOM derive business
behavior (Hoyer & MacInnis 2007). In growth. Although the WOM effect has been
addition to consumers’ personal preferences present for a very long time, with the new
and needs, there are psychological and developments and improvements in
sociological effects that influence the technology, it is much more important in
consumers’ purchasing decisions. Consumers influencing individuals buying decisions in
may purchase a product in order to achieve a recent years (Berry 2005).
social status or to belong to a group. They can
make a purchasing decision based on their Companies spend millions to implement
past experiences or they can communicate successful strategies to make consumers talk
with their environment and learn from other about their products and create an effective
consumers (Janssen & Jager 2001). WOM (Solomon, Marshall & Stuart 2008).
The advertising agency JWT Worldwide
Consumers are connected in numerous ways states that, over 85 percent of top 1000 Birms
that were not available before. Internet plays use WOM tactics today (Wasserman 2006).
a vital role by connecting consumers through Certainly, companies cannot control all the
social networking sites, blogs, wikis, WOM created by the consumers. The
recommendations sites, etc. (Hennig-Thurau motivation to talk about a product and the
et al. 2010; Wuyts et al. 2010). Individuals level of satisfaction retrieved from
are tied to one another with invisible bonds. purchasing the product may vary depending
This forms criss-cross mesh of connections on different consumers. In addition, negative
similar to a Bishing net (Scott 1988). Each WOM can be created by unsatisfied
individual receives some kind of resource consumers or by unsuccessful WOM strategy
from the other individual it is as it happened to McDonalds (Wasserman
connected to. These connections may 2006).
originate between friends, family members,
people whose life standards and interests are The connections between the individuals
similar, people who are physically close to represent one individual’s attention to the
each other or strangers that can reach one other. Some actors selectively pay attention
another through internet (Libai et al. 2010). to other actors, while in some cases
In order to understand behaviors of everybody pays attention to one person’s
individuals, it is important to understand the opinion, for instance, a strong public figure
dynamics of the network in which they (Lazer 2003). This argument was Birst
belong. introduced by a landmark study by
Lazarsfeld, Berolson and Gaudet (1944). It
Information diffusion among the individuals was found that mass media advertisements
in a network is an important concept for do not directly influence mass market but
marketers. In a group of people, individuals’ instead influence small amount of people
attitudes and opinions on an issue change as who then influence other individuals through
they get influenced by other members WOM. A new term “opinion leaders” is coined
(Friedkin 2003). The inBluence on an then. These people need not necessarily be
individual that originates from another “leaders” in the usual sense but they are
individual is known to be word-of-mouth leaders who have direct influence on other
(WOM) effect. Companies are taking strategic individuals due to being exceedingly
decisions in order to benefit from the WOM informed, valued or merely “connected”
power. Management consultants McKinsey & (Watts & Dodds 2007). They inBluence
Co. estimate that two thirds of the US others’ behaviors and attitudes because
economy is driven by WOM effect (Dye others believe these people have expertise
2000). In their book “Connected Marketing”, about the product (Rogers 1983). Most of the
3 Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies
time, they become the first to buy new Agent based modeling (ABM) is a new
products and they reduce the uncertainty for analytical tool for social sciences and it
other consumers (Solomon, Marshall & enables one to build models where individual
Stuart 2008). The marketing policy of entities and their interactions are directly
Windows 95 governed by Microsoft has represented (Gilbert 2008). In recent years,
shown the influence and power of opinion ABM is being utilized as an alternative
leaders (Rosen 2000). research methodology in various social
sciences; in economics (Tesfatsion & Judd
Marketing has been an effective tool and 2006), sociology (Macy & Willer 2002),
strategy for increasing the sales of a product anthropology (Kohler & Gumerman 2000),
(Jager 2007). For marketing strategies, politics (Kollman & Scott 2006), and business
companies look for segmentation of its (North & Macal 2007). The modeling
consumers, provision of successful goods and approach is applied in sub fields of business;
services for each consumer segment and also Binance (Lebaron 2006), organization (Myong
employment of right promotional tools and & Harrington 2006), supply chain
pricing strategies to accomplish the management (Valluri, North & Macal 2009)
company’s objectives (Walker, Mullins & and in marketing, Journal of Business
Larreche 2008). Marketing mix is the Research (Gilbert et al. 2007).
strategic tool-box that marketers use in order
to create a desired response from a set of ABM is an efficient tool to model consumer to
predefined consumers (Solomon, Marshall & consumer (C2C) interactions. The study by
Stuart 2008). Marketing mix, commonly Ma and Nakamori (2005) deBines ABM as an
known as the McCarthy’s (1960) 4Ps, emerging simulation technique that promises
consists of product, price, place and to overcome the difficulties of modeling real
promotion. Companies spend effort to find world situations and managing complex
the most efficient marketing mix in order to human behavior. Libai et al. (2010) also
implement a successful marketing strategy. stress the importance of ABM, as a simulator
4Ps of marketing are essential elements of a of “would be world” in which consumers
marketing strategy, and WOM often interact with each other and aggregate
complements and extends the effects of outcomes of consumer interactions can be
promotions and has an effect on the sales of observed. ABM is an advantageous tool to use
the product. Companies may be for modeling complex human behaviors
underestimating promotion effectiveness by aggregating from individual C2C interactions
ignoring possible WOM effects (Homan, and testing their reactions to different
Legon & Libai 2004). marketing strategies. It enables one to take
into account the complexity of consumer
Marketing strategies aim at increasing the behavior in a social system such as
sales of a company, by the sociological and monitoring and handling psychological
psychological influences they create on effects produced by advertisements and
consumers as well. In addition, each distinct WOM effects emerging through consumer
individual is influenced in a different level networks. Embedding human cognition to
and each individual has the ability to agents makes it possible to understand the
influence other people with their purchase dynamics of consumers’ decision making
experience. Product characteristics values processes.
are also important factors in influencing the
buying decision of the consumer. Modern Agent based models are increasingly being
technologies and new marketing strategies used in the marketing literature. We can
evolve over time. The analysis of this refer to the studies of Jager (2000), Janssen
complex environment may require different and Jager (1999), Baudisch (2007), Delre et
modeling methodologies besides the al. (2007) and Kuenzel and Musters (2007)
traditional approach. for different implementations of agent based
Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies 4
models on a variety of subjects. The study of social science and it enables a researcher to
Jager (2000) implements ABM to simulate create, analyze and experiment with models
individual decision making on communal composed of agents that interact within an
resource usage. Janssen and Jager (1999) environment” (Gilbert 2008). Unlike the
uses agent ABM to model behavioral rules traditional approach in business research,
that dominate consumers’ decision making which mainly focuses on collecting data
processes and study lock – in markets. The through surveys, analyzing them and
study Baudisch (2007) uses ABM to inferring conclusions with the aid of
understand consumer heterogeneity in statistical models (Hair et al. 2009), ABM
footwear consumption sector, Delre et al. gives one the ability to create agents that
(2007) investigates the consumer behavior have individual heterogeneity and decision
on the take off of a new product and the rules, space them in a desired geographical
study of Kuenzel and Musters (2007) or any type of space, connect them through a
implement ABM approach for infrequently network for interaction and simulate them to
consumed products. better understand the dynamics of the social
system (Gilbert 2008). Although ABM is not a
In this study, we use ABM to evaluate the new concept, only in recent years, large
efficiency of different marketing strategies of amount of studies began to be published.
a firm producing a technological product in a This may be due to significant improvements
monopolistic market. In our model, in computer technology which enables
consumer preferences are influenced not modelers to analyze interacting agents, such
only from the quality characteristics of the as people or firms, and to simulate complex
product but also from WOM effect situations.
disseminated from other consumers and
opinion leaders. We will analyze the effect of This promising computational method
different levels of product characteristics, overcomes the difficulties of conducting
price, promotion and opinion leader experiments in social sciences. In real life, it
strategies on sales patterns and profitability is usually impossible or unethical to create
of the company. We aim to contribute to isolated social systems, and apply treatments
consumer behavior research by conducting to observe the outcomes. ABM allows us to
different simulation experiments to find how create virtual social systems and conduct
price, promotion and quality factors are experiments repeatedly with different
affecting the profitability of the company and parameters and with randomly varying
assess the importance of WOM in marketing factors. Given a range of inputs, one can
strategies. experiment to see how the model behaves, in
other words, one can simulate the real world
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 under variety of circumstances (Gilbert
briefly reviews ABM, the methodology that is 2008).
used in this study. Section 3 gives the details
of our model. In Section 4, experimental Agents in the model are autonomous decision
setup of our simulation is presented. Section making entities (Khouja, Hadzikadic & Zaffar
5 presents the results of the experiments. 2008).
The final section concludes the study and
discusses the possible further improvements. The study of Wooldridge and Jennings
(1995) claims an agent, from a more
Methodology theoretical view of artificial intelligence, is a
computer system that is either
In this study we use agent based modeling as conceptualized or implemented using the
our methodology. ABM is a computational concepts that are more usually applied to
simulation method that serves to the study of humans.
social sciences. “It is a form of computational
5 Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies
There are T discrete time steps at each In this study we only take quality as the
experiment. At each time step the model product decision and we set two
assess whether an individual already technological attributes for the specified
purchased the product or not. If the product. The product has two different
individual has purchased the product, she attributes. For the first attribute, consumers
uses the product until the last time step and may prefer any value depending on their
does not make a purchasing decision in needs. Size can be n example for this kind of
consecutive time steps. Otherwise the attribute. The second attribute is “the more,
individual revises her buying decision in the better” type of attribute, which means
every time step. At the beginning of each that consumers are always willing to get
replication, the population is initialized and higher levels of it, such as resolution of the
the company launches its product into the screen.
market.
Price is the amount the consumer pay in
As the consumer population is created, exchange of the product. Even though it may
randomly distributed parameters are seem that lower prices will attract larger
assigned to every individual for their product number of consumers, with the adequate
promotion strategies, the motivation and
7 Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies
(2
(1)
(3)
consumer will prefer higher values. However, Each consumer has different preferences and
because of the budget limitations they might priorities for the product and gets influenced
choose to trade some resolution quality for in different levels by external factors. The
lower price. For this reason, the preference satisfaction a consumer receives from
values are uniformly distributed between 0.6 consuming the product is the first
and 1. component of the utility function. This
component determines the level and the
The second component of the utility function direction of WOM, a consumer disseminates
consists of the promotion effects. For each to others. If the person is an opinion leader,
time step, the company has the power to then the influence he or she makes will be
define a promotion strategy. three times as powerful as a normal
consumer in our experiments. The company
must pay a fixed amount of money for each
(4) opinion leader it collaborates. Opinion
leaders that work with the company do not
where; disseminate negative WOM. We assume that
only consumers who have purchased the
• Pri: promotion sensitivity of consumer i product create a WOM effect. An important
concept is that, even though the consumer
• Cpr: constant price sensitivity factor purchased the product, he can disseminate
independent of consumer i negative WOM and hamper other consumers’
buying stimuli.
• Prot: promotion intensity at time t
The fourth component of the utility function
• β: smoothing constant consists of price.
In the third component, we cover WOM Price and utility has an inverse relationship.
effect. Company sets a predetermined price for each
time step. This price is multiplied by the
(5) consumer’s price sensitivity. Consumers with
higher budget limits will be less sensitive to
where; price and others will be influenced more by
the price of the product, but in any case we
• WOMi: amount of WOM consumer i assume price is an important attribute in the
receives purchase decision so we randomly assign
price sensitivity values to consumers
• Si: social sensitivity of consumer i between 0.5 and 1 instead of distributing it
evenly between 0 and 1.
• CWOM: constant WOM sensitivity factor
independent of consumer i
9 Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies
We use a threshold model for activating the introduce randomness to the consumer
buying decision (Granovetter, 1978). The decision process, logit function is used to
study of Meyer and Johnson (1999) Bind that, determine the buying decisions of consumers
consumers have a minimum threshold level (Anderson, de Palma & Thisse 1992).
that must be satisfied to purchase products, (7)
but do not have maximum limit. They also
claim that, consumers do face a marginal
utility decrease resulting from consumption
of products that are functionally beyond their
requirements. In our study, we set minimum Logit functions are beneficial tools used in
threshold level for consumption but we social simulations. In Equation 7, u stands for
ignore marginal utility decrease resulting the utility of a particular consumer, k being
from higher functionality of products. the smoothing constant and being the
buying threshold. The logit function ranges
As it is mentioned before, human beings do
from 0 to 1 (Fig.1).
not always act rationally and they may not
always purchase a product even though it
satisfies consumer’s expectations. In order to
If the utility of consumer exceeds the with a probability generated by the logit
threshold value, consumer buys the product function.
(8)
not decay due to external factors after effects of different marketing strategies
purchasing the product. employed by the company. Each experiment
is performed two times, when WOM
Experimental Setup influence is in effect and not in effect in order
to evaluate the importance of WOM effect.
In this study, our primary aim is to assess the The first set of experiments is conducted in
efficiency and profitability of different the presence of WOM.
marketing strategies through simulation
experiments. Each experiment, which The parameters that remain the same in all
consists of 20 time steps, is replicated 100 our experiments are shown in Table1:
times. In each experiment different
parameter setups are governed, in order to
monitor the directions and the magnitude of
There are five different decision variables The product has for example; a small size and
that affect the buying decision of the a low resolution for its screen. Product has a
consumer. Price, promotion, two design high price and low promotion intensity. The
parameters of the product and number of company targets 5 opinion leaders. At each
opinion leaders the company chooses to new scenario, all the parameters are kept
collaborate with. The simulations are run in constant except one. In experiment 2 (Exp.2),
order to monitor the effects of different only the price of the product is modified and
product design, price, promotion and opinion in Exp.3, only the promotion intensity is
leader strategies on profit of the company. changed.
In the first experiment, which is set as the Parameter values of all the experiments are
benchmark, a low quality product is created. summarized in Table2.
11 Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies
from 153 to 327. Although WOM is positive expectations. The consumers purchasing
in this setup due to high product decisions are not triggered by opinion
characteristics, the number of buyers stops leaders and the extra cost associated with
increasing after a short period of time as in each opinion leader may cause a decrease in
other experiments (Fig.2-d). In the first time company’s profit.
step, an individual is inBluenced by 75 other
individuals. In the second time step, this In Exp.6 a decreasing price strategy is
figure signiBicantly increases to 85, governed. The company decreased the price
explaining that positive WOM induced many of the product by 2% at each time step. The
other individuals to purchase the product. At number of buyers in the first time step is not
the 8th time step, this Bigure reaches 91 and different compared to the benchmark
stays constant afterwards. This can be experiment. The number of buyers is initially
explained by the fact that, while for most of around 216 (Fig.2-f). Falling prices triggers
the consumers, an individual is connected to the buying motivation of new individuals. In
purchase the product in the first time steps, this setup, the number of consumers that
there may not be enough people left in the purchased the product increases steadily
consumer’s network to purchase the current until the end of the time horizon and reaches
product and make a positive WOM to trigger 280. Profit of the company (162), is slightly
other individuals purchasing decisions. higher than the benchmark experiment.
Although the number of buyers is increased,
In Exp.5, the company sets its marketing due to the falling prices the profit of the
strategy, to reach higher number of opinion company does not increase dramatically.
leaders. The initial number of buyers
increases 228 compared to benchmark and Finally, the increasing promotion strategy is
reaches 275 at the end of the scenario (Fig.2- tested in Exp.7. The promotion intensity is
e). The profit of the company decreases from increased by 2% at each time step. As with
152 to 90, indicating that when a product the decreasing price strategy, increasing
does not satisfy consumer preferences, promotion strategy triggers new individuals
targeting at opinion leaders do not result in purchasing decision and the number of
significant increase in the number of buyers. buyers keeps increasing until the last time
In this setup an individual is influenced by 45 step (Fig.2-g). This strategy, compared to the
other individuals on the average, and only 8 benchmark experiment, leads to significant
of the 45 are opinion leaders. This indicates increases in both the number of buyers and
that although the company targets increased profit. Although the associated promotion
number of opinion leaders to collaborate cost is lower compared to Exp3, in which the
with, it fails to convince people to purchase promotion intensity is set high and kept
the product when individuals think the constant for all 20 time steps, the proBit of
product characteristics are below their the company in this scenario is lower.
13 Journal of Marketing Research and Case Studies
a)Exp.1 b)Exp.2
c)Exp.3 d)Exp.4
e)Exp.5 f)Exp.6
g)Exp.7
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product. The company should produce higher Effects of Filtering Incongruent
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As further studies, the model can be Delre, S. A., Jager, W., Bijmolt, T. H. A. &
extended to include more than one company Janssen, M. A. (2007). “Targeting and Timing
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analyzed. Dye, R. (2000). “The Buzz on Buzz,” Harvard
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