Be A Part or Be Apart? The Consumer Utility and Social Networks: An Application of Agent-Based Modeling

Abstract

<p>本文探討社會網絡對消費者效用的影響，以代理人基模擬消費者於不同網絡型態的互動，重構Jager（2000）的模型並使用二維的效用函數。決策時間代表涉入程度，刻畫所有消費情境。模擬不同型態的社會網絡、密度、認知類型、總人數對個別消費效用的影響。並將效用函數拆解成個人與社會部份以捕捉影響主因。結果表明，任何社會網絡中，網絡愈疏散，消費者所獲得的效用愈高，原因為社會部份的效用稀釋減少；社群影響力下降，非純粹個人效用提升。檢視市場參與人數與社會網絡密度對消費者效用的影響後發現，若消費者身處適切的社會網絡，消費者效用提升。意即，較多的消費者於較疏散的網絡或較少的消費者於較密集的網絡，這二種社群環境對新進廠商相對有利，既存廠商優勢不明顯。</p> <p> </p><p>This study aims to examine the effect of social networks on consumer utility. An agent-based model was employed to simulate the interaction among consumers in different social network types. Jager’s (2000) agent-based model was reconstructed, and a two-dimensional utility function was introduced, considering decision-making time (product involvement) and incorporating all types of consumption scenarios. The goal was to simulate the impact of different types of social networks, social network densities, consumer cognitive types, and the total number of consumers on individual consumer utility. The utility function was decomposed into individual and social components to identify the primary factors influencing consumer utility. Research results indicate that in any social network, as the network becomes more dispersed, consumer utility increases. The reason for this is that the decline in social influence causes the social aspect of utility to be diluted and reduced, rather than a pure increase in individual utility. After examining the impact of the number of market participants and the density of social networks on consumer utility, it was found that if consumers are in an appropriate social network, consumer utility increases. This refers to situations where there are more consumers in a dispersed network or fewer consumers in a dense network. In these two types of social network environments, it is relatively advantageous for new entrants, but this advantage is not as evident for existing vendors.</p> <p> </p>