Information Cascades: Analysis of a Viral TikTok Product
For Gen Z, TikTok has become a search engine in place of traditional information databases such as Google. Many users have turned to TikTok videos as a source of news, how-to’s, and product reviews. Given that not all TikTok videos are fact-checked and often biased depending on the creator of the video, it brings upon a phenomenon where people are updating their set of beliefs based on others’ beliefs, rather than developing those beliefs from objective evidence or cause. TikTok’s unique algorithm, which is built to continually recommend niche videos to users who have demonstrated (by their online behavior) that they already subscribe to a certain niche or opinion, can quickly create communities of users who share similar opinions and watch similar content.
With what we know about information cascades, we can potentially explain how products advertised on TikTok are able to quickly develop a “cult-following”. Through the cascade model, we will analyze a product that has gone viral in the past two years, despite not having been as popular in years prior: the Dyson Airwrap.
- Consider user 1. An individual purchases the Dyson Airwrap and enjoys the product [ACCEPT]. They post a positive TikTok video about the product (user 1 follows his/her own private signal).
- User 2 comes across User 1’s video and decides to purchase the Dyson Airwrap, based on the positive review that User 1 gave. They purchase the Dyson Airwrap, and decide they like the product [ACCEPT]. Here, user 2 could have accepted or rejected the product, since he/she follows their own signal. In this scenario, they happen to agree with user 1 and accept the Dyson Airwrap.
- User 3 views both user 1 and 2’s videos and decides to purchase the product. User 3 has received three independent signals (two inferred from user 1 and 2, and his/her own observation). Since user 1 and 2 accepted the product, we know that person 3 will follow the majority signal by conveying a positive impression of the product [ACCEPT].
- Perhaps after purchasing the product, user 3 runs into a small flaw of the product. However, because user 3 has already heard two positive reviews about the product on TikTok, and he/she decides to overlook the flaw and still accepts. Perhaps she will give the product a positive review in the TikTok comments section.
Moving forward, we know that the next users to come across the Dyson Airwrap will have at least 2 signals indicating a majority acceptance of the product. This is where a cascade will begun, as many of the users who come across these Dyson Airwrap TikTok reviews will tend to ignore their own signals and follow the majority. This situation would align with the cascade model, where once the number of acceptances differs from the number of rejections by two or more, a cascade takes over, and everyone simply follows the majority decision forever.
Source(s):
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/gen-z-tiktok-search-engine.html