The Bandwagon Effect
I was doing some research on the trends and online marketing in social media sites when I came across this phenomenon called “The Band Wagon Effect”.
The Band Wagon Effect by definition is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases more that they have already been adopted by others.
Or, in layman terms, it is a psychological phenomenon where people do something primarily because other people are doing it, irrespective of whether they have knowledge over the issue or not, regardless of their own beliefs, which they either choose to ignore or override.
This effect is more prevalent and observable in social media where suddenly a news/issue/topic becomes a sensation and everyone shares/tweets about it. This can be because of the companies who are quick in promoting their businesses in the giant social media sites and web-outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or political parties with trending hashtags on issues or individuals with or without intentions to influence a majority of people.
Nowadays, every single issue is associated with a hashtag and is used as bait in social media platforms to make people become aware, talk and discuss about eventually making the hashtag a trending one.
I wondered if whether this psychological phenomenon is supported by any technical/mathematical basis. A simple research for the same has resulted in an interesting concept often talked in behavioral economics and network theory called “Information Cascade”. Information cascade by definition is a phenomenon in which a number of people make the same decision in a sequential fashion.
The flow of bandwagon effect can often be seen in working in three phases, 1) Awareness 2) Mainstream 3) Fade Out
An important driving metric in this effect is Volume of people talking about ‘X’ in a particular time-frame which is divided into the above three phases. Where ‘X’ can be any issue or any topic. This phenomenon can be depicted as below and is self explanatory:
A recent study by Cornell University states that “The Bandwagon effect” propagates a positive correlation (by a factor of 2 or more) between the propensity for a person to click the “like” button on a post where they see more than a handful of likes are already there. This positive correlation can constructively affect a company’s profits or a driving factor for business or a political party’s propaganda/agenda. A further research is being done in the economics behind this effect which would be very interesting to follow.
Some interesting blogs and posts I found during my research are as follows:
