Contagious Why Things Catch On

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Notes
Introduction: Why Things Catch On
Sixty percent are gone:
 
www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/Ec1F07/restaurantsfail.pdf
.
“It 
was 
like 
eating 
gold”:
Taken 
from 
Barclay 
Prime’s 
Yelp 
page,
http://www.yelp.com/biz/barclay-prime-philadelphia
.
Most restaurants bomb:
Shane, Scott (2008), “Startup Failure Rates—The REAL numbers,” 
Small
Business Trends
, April 28, 
http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html
.
People share more than 16,000 words:
See Mehl, Matthais R., Simine Vazire, Nairan Ramirez-
Esparza, Richard B. Slatcher, and James W. Pennebaker (2007), “Are Women Really More
Talkative Than Men?” 
Science
317, 82.
100 million conversations about brands:
see Keller, Ed, and Barak Libai (2009), “A Holistic
Approach to the Measurement of WOM,” presentation at ESOMAR Worldwide Media
Measurement Conference, Stockholm (May 4–6).
We try websites our neighbors recommend:
see Trusov, Michael, Randolph E. Bucklin, and Koen
Pauwels (2009), “Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an
Internet Social Networking Site,” 
Journal of Marketing
73 (September), 90–102.
Word of mouth is the primary factor:
Bughin, Jacques, Jonathan Doogan, and Ole Jørgen Vetvik
(2010), “A New Way to Measure Word-of-Mouth Marketing,” 
McKinsey Quarterly
(white paper).
Goel, Watts, and Goldstein 2012:
“The Structure of Online Diffusion Networks,” 
Proceedings of the
13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce
(EC ’12).
$200 increase in restaurant sales:
see Godes, David, and Dina Mayzlin (2009), “Firm-Created
Word-of-Mouth Communication: Evidence from a Field Study,” 
Marketing Science
28, no. 4, 721–
39.
twenty more books sold:
Chevalier, Judith, and Dina Mayzlin (2006), “The Effect of Word of Mouth
on Sales: Online Book Reviews,” 
Journal of Marketing Research
43, no. 3, 345–54.
Doctors are more likely:
Iyengar, Raghuram, Christophe Van den Bulte, and Thomas W. Valente
(2011), “Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion,” 
Marketing Science
30, no. 2, 195–212.
People are more likely:
Christakis, Nicholas A., and James Fowler (2009), 
Connected: The
Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
(New York: Little,
Brown and Company).
while traditional advertising is still useful:
Stephen, Andrew, and Jeff Galak (2012), “The Effects
of Traditional and Social Earned Media on Sales: A Study of a Microlending Marketplace,”
Journal of Marketing Research
(forthcoming); Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels, “Effects of Word-
of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing.”
customers referred by their friends:
 Schmitt, Philipp, Bernd Skiera, and Christophe Van den Bulte
(2011), “Referral Programs and Customer Value,”