He says he and two colleagues “have hypothesized that the way some sales data fluctuate over time is directly related to a major structure through which products spread: social networks.
“How products spread through social networks is something marketers have almost no information about,” Dover writes. “Companies may have the names of some of their customers and occasionally information about what other products they like to buy. But they lack data on how their customers’ purchases affect the buying behavior of others they know.”
Read the full opinion piece, published 7/5/13 by U.S. News & World Report.
