The Emergence of Scrub Daddy with Relation to Networks
http://www.businessinsider.com/scrub-daddy-is-shark-tank-biggest-success-2015-4
The link above goes to a news article talking about the overwhelming “Shark Tank” success that is the Scrub Daddy, an improved version of a multipurpose sponge. After appearing on the popular TV show “Shark Tank” this product received investments with which the product became extremely popular. I will try to explain the success of Scrub Daddy through what we have learned in Networks.
After the appearance on the show, the product was able to receive publication through shopping television shows like QVC and infomercials and also through being placed in major stores such as Walmart. This exposes a large audience to the product and allows the introduction of the product in many spots and clusters in the network. Let behavior A = using Scrub Daddy, and behavior B = using any other sponge. Assuming that everyone was using a normal sponge before the Scrub Daddy came along, all nodes representing people observed behavior B. With all the early and nearly immediate popularity, behavior A is able to be initialized in many places and clusters. Additionally, the Scrub Daddy is a technical improvement on the average sponge, so we can assume that q is relatively low. So we can assume that in certain clusters, behavior A completely overtakes the cluster until it reaches a cluster with density that is too high.
With the Internet, online reviews are a common way to figure out if a product is good or bad. This information that we find is called a private signal. If we look at the states of the world, in these case where Scrub Daddy is a better or worse choice than sponges. By comparing our private signals with what we see other people are doing, we make judgments based off of the most intuitively logical option that will give us the best payoff. So if we see an overwhelming amount of people buying a product, we might buy the product despite seeing some bad reviews for the product and disregard our private signals. With products that are already very popular, they become even more popular to some degree because of information cascades.