Social Hubs: Do They Exist and What Is Their Role?

In this paper we present empirical findings on social hubs – individuals who maintain a large number of ties to other people – and their influence on the overall process of innovation adoption. We argue, somewhat contrary to recent suggestions, that social hubs adopt sooner than other people not because they are innovative but because they are exposed earlier to an innovation due to their multiple social links. We further distinguish between innovator and follower hubs and show that the first influence mainly the speed of the adoption in a network while the latter influence mainly the number of people that eventually adopt the innovation.



Citation:

Jacob Goldenberg, Donald Lehmann, and Sangman Han (2009) ,"Social Hubs: Do They Exist and What Is Their Role?", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 36-37.

Authors

Jacob Goldenberg, Hebrew University, Israel
Donald Lehmann, Columbia University, USA
Sangman Han, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea



Volume

NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36 | 2009



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