A trick of the tail: the role of social networks in shaping distributional properties of experience-good markets

The diffusion of social media has radically changed the number of peers with whom consumers interact with when making a decision. While consumption decisions depend on many factors, such as prices, qualities, distribution channels, and marketing, in this article, we study the effects of a single aspect: the role of the number of social connections in shaping consumers’ decisions. We present an agent-based simulation model where virtual consumers...