A Columbia University study published in Science (2/10/06 issue) sheds light on the role that social influence can play in driving consumer demand. Researchers recruited more than 14,000 people in a study to measure the impact of social influence on the choice of songs to download.
Participants were randomly allocated to one of two experimental conditions: “independent,” in which they saw only the names of the bands and songs; or “social influence,” in which they could see, in addition to the bands and songs, how many times each song had been downloaded by previous participants.
The main finding was that social influence amplified the inequality of outcomes, meaning that popular songs were more popular and unpopular songs were less popular than when participants made their decisions independently. These results suggest that when people are influenced by what others think, do or buy, their individual choices clearly change.
The constant proliferation of choice will further exaggerate consumers’ limited capacity to discover and digest content, thus strengthening their tendency to like—or at least consider—what they think other people like. Social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook, tagging sites such as Flickr and Del.icio.us, and user-generated content sites such as YouTube are increasingly exposing us to other peoples’ decisions on what they watch, listen to and buy.
The call to action for buzz marketing execs here? Exploit the emerging social media!
Once a product or service has gained a following, marketers can amplify the corresponding social influence signal. They can direct the attention of a much wider audience to the individuals or groups who are already enthusiastic about it. This strategy differs significantly from word-of-mouth or viral marketing approaches that seek to identify so-called influentials in order to solicit their endorsements.
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Ok, here’s a thought. With the continued fragmentation of media, the increasing number of choices, at what point do we reach media outlets that have no critical mass. I mean when is a little too little?
It is really possible that 500, 1000 cable stations can each be profitable?
The model seems to be that aggregators of content are the true new media, and those that have the business model to pay for content will be declining? Your thoughts?
I think about this in the exact opposite way.
“Influence happens when you have great content”
So all of us as publishers should be generating the best content we can to win the audiences we desire.
I think you’re right on, Paul. The question for those of us on the B2B side, though, is which social networks and online communities are going to be relevant. I doubt that MySpace and Facebook and going to matter much for folks selling business consulting or enterprise software (although IBM, interestingly enough, has gotten some real visibility for mainframe computers on YouTube), but I have no doubt that more focused networks will become increasingly influential for our customers and other stakeholders. I do wonder, though, as Larry Weber suggested recently, if the most important networks and communities will be private ones, rather than the come-one, come-all ones now getting all the buzz.
Rob, seems to support the point that is it about those who aggregate content. The old-time model could be the movie/television industry. When those media first started it was about studio produced content. Then it moved to where they purchased content under their name, now it’s independently produced content with smaller independents taking a smaller share of the pie, but nonetheless having an impact.
Paul, that describes a circle of where we may be today and what you articulate It is really the combination of both independent content finding a home that generates significantly larger traffic than that which the content provider can generate on their own.