Summary
Contents
Written by a group of top American and international scholars, Networks in Marketing provides an overview of what networks are and how they are used in marketing management practices. This timely volume examines a variety of topics, including customer-to-customer and business-to-business networks, relationships as investment opportunities, and strategic alliances. It also looks at market dynamics, specifically brand switching and the structure of consumer networks. In addition to these major topics, a stellar cast of marketing scholars–Lou Stern, Robert Spekman, Joseph Galaskiewicz, and others–contributes mini chapters that reflect on their own research and expertise. The final chapter explores several advanced methodological issues and discusses directions for future research. Researchers and professionals in marketing, consumer behavior, relationship marketing, and methodologists will find the information provided in this volume valuable. This book may also be of interest to organizational networkers and traditional social network scholars.
Social Contagion and Social Structure
Social Contagion and Social Structure
It is widely understood that social contagion, the process by which a person catches an idea or behavior from another person, is a function of social structure. Network measures of cohesion and structural equivalence operationalize the two social structural conditions in which ideas and behaviors are contagious. Both conditions are circumstances in which people are expected to see themselves as socially similar, and so believe that they should find value in the same ideas and behaviors. By cohesion, contagion occurs between people in the same primary group in the sense that the recipient has a strong relationship with the source. By structural equivalence, contagion occurs between competitors in the sense that recipient and source are defined ...
