Social Networks with Competing Products

Abstract: We introduce a new threshold model of social networks, in which the nodes influenced by their neighbours can adopt one out of several alternatives. We characterize social networks for which adoption of a product by the whole network is possible (respectively necessary) and the ones for which a unique outcome is guaranteed. These characterizations directly yield polynomial time algorithms that allow us to determine whether a given social network satisfies one of the above properties. We also study algorithmic questions for networks without unique outcomes. We show that the problem of determining whether a final network exists in which all nodes adopted some product is NP-complete. In turn, the problems of determining whether a given node adopts some (respectively, a given) product in some (respectively, all) network(s) are either co-NP complete or can be solved in polynomial time. Further, we show that the problem of computing the minimum possible spread of a product is NP-hard to approximate with an approximation ratio better than $\Omega(n)$, in contrast to the maximum spread, which is efficiently computable. Finally, we clarify that some of the above problems can be solved in polynomial time when there are only two products.