Apple vs. Android: A comparison of social effects in adoption

It has long been known among marketers that our social network matters when we make purchasing decisions, and that having positive word of mouth about a product can be a key to success; see e.g. [1] for a review of studies on social networks within marketing. Traditionally, data on social networks have been difficult to collect, but in recent years researchers have gained access to massive social network data from e.g. online instant messaging services [8][5] and phone log data [2][4][3][6][9]. Such data has made it possible to study e.g. social churn [3], service uptake [2] among telecom customers, and product adoption on an Instant Messaging network [8].These studies confirm that consumer behavior is dependent on the communication network. We have in a recent study [6] shown how the structure of the adopter network—the social network of adopters—develops over time, and how social spreading can be measured by studying this network. In this paper, we do a comparative study of social spreading effects for two competing types of smartphones - the Apple iPhone, and smartphones based on Google’s Android OS.