The Library
Non-Monotonic Status Effects in New Product Adoption: Theory and Evidence of Middle-Status Anxiety and Middle-Status Conformity.
Tools
Tools
Tools
Hu, Yansong and Van den Bulte, Christophe (2012) Non-Monotonic Status Effects in New Product Adoption: Theory and Evidence of Middle-Status Anxiety and Middle-Status Conformity. Working Paper. Wharton, University of Pennsylvania.
Full text not available from this repository.
Official URL: http://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/research/curren...
Abstract
The present study investigates how the tendency to adopt a new product independently of contagion influence, the recipients’ susceptibility to such influence, and the sources’ strength of influence vary with social status. Leveraging insights from social psychology and sociology about middle-status anxiety and conformity, we propose that for products which potential adopters expect to boost their status, both the tendency to adopt independently from others and the susceptibility to contagion is higher for middle-status than for low- and high-status customers. Applying a nested case-control design to the adoption of commercial kits used in genetic engineering, we find evidence that status affects (i) how early or late one adopts regardless of social influence, (ii) how susceptible one is to social influence operating through social ties, and (iii) how influential one’s own behavior is in triggering adoption by others. All three effects go beyond the standard notions that high-status individuals are influential or influenceable merely because they are social hubs connected to many others. Also, the inverse-U patterns in (i) and (ii) are consistent with middle-status anxiety and conformity. The findings have implications for how to use status to better understand adoption and contagion mechanisms and for identifying seeding points in word-of-mouth marketing campaigns
| Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Marketing & Strategic Management Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
| Publisher: | Wharton, University of Pennsylvania |
| Date: | 2012 |
| Number of Pages: | 49 |
| Status: | Not Peer Reviewed |
| Publication Status: | Published |
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
| URI: | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/43815 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
