Social Contagion as a Driver of Digital Product Use

Social contagion is ubiquitous in the day-to-day lives of consumers. Whether at home with their families, at work with colleagues, spending leisure time with friends, or even when only surrounded by strangers, consumers are always exposed to and influenced by the actions of others. The wide-scale use of digital communication technologies and online social networks has further exacerbated this influence by enabling more varied and intense ways to connect and interact. In the three essays constituting this dissertation, we ask how marketers and product designers can purposefully use social product design features to achieve superior managerial outcomes by harnessing social contagion. The first essay delineates the state-of the-art research on social contagion by systematically mapping the moderators of social contagion. The first essay delineates the state-of the-art research on social contagion by systematically mapping the moderators of social contagion and identifies avenues for future research. In the second essay, we identify social contagion through geographic contiguity in the repeated use of a low-involvement digital service and show that it can be nearly completely crowded out by marketing communication. In the last essay, we demonstrate that product design features can be used to induce joint consumption which in turn leads to social contagion and ultimately an increased level of product use.

Gábor Darvasi studied Physics at the University of Heidelberg. After working as a management consultant with Simon-Kucher & Partners for several years, he obtained his PhD (2019) in Quantitative Marketing from the University of Munich (LMU).

Martin Spann studied Economics at the University of Kiel. He obtained his PhD (2002) and his Habilitation (2005) from the University of Frankfurt. Since 2010 he is a professor and director of the Institute of Electronic Commerce and Digital Markets at the University of Munich (LMU).