关键词: 社会网络分析, 影响力最大化问题, 更新产品, 投放时机

Abstract: In recent years, the delayed launch of updated products has become one of product operation strategies in many enterprises. At present, researches on the timing of launching updated products are mainly based on the Bass model which assumes homogeneous users without considering specific social networks, and without optimizing initial seed selection. Based on the social influence maximization model, this paper considers the optimization of launching time and seed selection for updated products: in a social network with the existence of old products, products spread their influence in the form of diffusion model , and the old products would stop the spread when the updated products were launched, and how to choose the stage   and the   seeds for launching new products maximizes the sum of the profits from both the old and the updated products. In the diffusion model  , if the influence of a user from the neighbors of the purchased product exceeds a certain threshold, the user remains active and influences his/her inactive neighbors, and the diffusion stops when there is no new active user. In this paper, an integer programming model was established for the timing and seed optimization of product diffusion, and a multi-stage greedy algorithm was designed to solve large-scale instances. The computational experiments show that this algorithm has a higher solution efficiency than the traditional greedy algorithm, and a better solution quality than the degree discount algorithm and the random algorithm. Meanwhile, simulations in a real network exhibit that when the profit of the updated product is small, the number of seeds is small, and the planning stage restrictions are larger, the delayed launching time will easily make the manufacturer obtain a higher profit and market effect.

Key words: social network analysis, influence maximization, updated products, updated product, launch timing