The Diffusion Of Digital Information Products With The Influences Of The Bandwagon Effects And Network Effects:a Perspective Of Complex Networks

Nowadays, the society has entered an era of innovation. As the core competitiveness, innovation is quite significant for the survival and sustainable development of enterprises. If innovation cannot be transmitted and accepted by society, which means the diffusion of innovation, the innovation will not be able to achieve its social value. The diffusion of innovative products has attracted the attentions of many scholars and entrepreneurs. During the process of innovative product diffusion, especially in the process of digital information product diffusion, the bandwagon effects and network effects play vital roles.In order to fully demonstrate the interactions between consumers, the paper establishes a micro-model of digital information product diffusion, based on the complex network perspective and concerned with Third-degree Influence Theory,. In the method of simulation to analyze the process of digital information product diffusion, the paper studies how the network structures, the strengths of bandwagon effects and network effects and the weights of three degrees in the network affect the rate of digital information product diffusion under the influences of bandwagon effects and network effects. Then, the paper establishes the diffusion model of two competing digital information products to explore the diffusion processes in the two cases with large switching cost and small switching cost. Meanwhile, based on the theoretical research, the two instances, Wechat red envelope and mobile phone software applications for taxi, are separately listed. The real diffusion networks of Wechat red envelope and mobile phone software applications for taxi are constructed, compared with other network constructions. The research analyzes the influences of bandwagon effects and network effects on the diffusion of Wechat red envelope and mobile phone software applications for taxi.Studies show that there are positive correlations between the strengths of bandwagon effects and network effects and the rate of digital information product diffusion, but the influences of them on the final diffusion rate of digital information products are different. The structure of the network also affects the rate of digital information product diffusion. It is found that the average rate of digital information product diffusion in the random network is largest, followed by the regular network, while the average rate of digital information product diffusion in the small-world and scale-free network is the smallest. The influences of the weights of three degrees on compatible and incompatible products are different. In case of competitive innovative products, compared to high switching cost, the competitive products of small switching cost diffuse more completely with a higher final adoption rate and a larger market. Apart from that, by constructing the real diffusion network, the paper finds that the real diffusion network of Wechat red envelope is close to the small-world network and the real diffusion network of mobile phone software applications for taxi shows the mixed characteristics of the small-world network and the scale-free network. Compared to the small-world network and scale-free network, the real diffusion networks have higher clustering coefficients and smaller average path lengths.