时间：12月23日 15：00-16:30

地点：中欧平台武东路校区106

演讲人：Xing Fang，Visiting Assistant Professor, Tulane University, LA

摘要: Referral program has been increasingly popular as a tool to acquire new customers and retain existing customers. Compared to traditional customer acquisition methods, referral program is more cost-effective and heavily relies on the social network of existing customers. Due to the challenge of matching referral data with social network data, little previous literature studies the role of social network properties in referral programs. In this paper, we study how the social network impacts the effectiveness of referral programs leveraging social media data, controlling for the latent personality traits from text mining. We demonstrate that the size and structure of a customer’s local network is a significant factor influencing the number of successful referrals, and personality is an important source of heterogeneity. Our results provide practical guidelines for identifying influencers and provide an automated framework for a more targeted referral program.