Contagious Why Things Catch On

The Blair Witch Project
can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project
.
black toilet paper:
Information about Renova, the Portuguese company that makes colored toilet
paper, can be found at 
http://www.renovaonline.net/_global/
.
180 
million 
people:
The 
facts 
about 
frequent 
flier 
programs 
came 
from
http://www.frequentflyerservices.com/press_room/facts_and_stats/frequent_flyer_facts.php
and
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/11/prweb8925371.htm
.
discrete markers motivate us:
Information about how goals can act as reference points and how
discrete progress markers can affect motivation can be found in: Heath, Chip, Richard P. Larrick,
and George Wu (1999), “Goals as Reference Points,” 
Cognitive Psychology
38, 79–109; Amir,
On, and Dan Ariely (2008), “Resting on Laurels: The Effects of Discrete Progress Markers as Sub-
goals on Task Performance and Preferences,” 
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,

---

Memory, and Cognition
34, no. 5, 1158–71; and Kivetz, Ran, Oleg Urminsky, and Yuhuang Zheng
(2006), “The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected: Purchase Acceleration, Illusionary Goal
Progress, and Customer Retention,” 
Journal of Marketing Research
43, no. 1, 39–56.
By increasing motivation, the cards:
 Kivetz, Ran, Oleg Urminsky, and Yuhuang Zheng (2006), “The
Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected: Purchase Acceleration, Illusionary Goal Progress, and
Customer Retention,” 
Journal of Marketing Research
, 43 (February), 39–58.
They preferred to do better:
 Solnick, S. J., and D. Hemenway (1998), “Is More Always Better? A
Survey on Positional Concerns.” 
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
37, 373–83.
the contest helped drive sales:
Information about Burberry’s “Art of the Trench” campaign can be
found 
at 
http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/01/19/burberry%E2%80%99s-trench-website-too-
good-to-be-true/
 
and
http://www.1to1media.com/weblog/2010/01/internet_marketing_from_the_tr.html
.
“It’s like the concierge”:
Interview with Ben Fischman on June 12, 2012. Thanks to Dave Balter for
introducing me to this great story.
If something is difficult to obtain:
 For a discussion of how effort influences inferences of value, see
Aronson, Elliot (1997), “The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: The Evolution and Vicissitudes of
an Idea,” in 
The Message of Social Psychology: Perspectives on Mind in Society
, ed. Craig
McGarty and S. Alexander Haslam (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing), 20–35; and Aronson,
Elliot, and Judson Mills (1959), “The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group,”
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
66, no. 6, 584–88. See also Sela, Aner, and Jonah
Berger (2011), “Decision Quicksand: How Trivial Choices Suck Us In,” 
Journal of Consumer
Research
, 39.
People evaluate cookbooks:
There are a number of valuable papers on how scarcity affects value.
See Verhallen, Theo (1982), “Scarcity and Consumer Choice Behavior,” 
Journal of Economic
Psychology
2, 299–322; Worchel, S., J. Lee, and A. Adewole (1975), “Effects of Supply and
Demand on Ratings of Object Value,” 
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
32, 906–14;
Fromkin, H. L., J. C. Olson, R. L. Dipboye, and D. Barnaby (1971), “A Commodity Theory
Analysis of Consumer Preferences for Scarce Products,”