Analysis of optimal sampling for innovation diffusion of contingent products

This paper examines the impact of product sampling under various pricing strategies on the diffusion of primary and contingent products and determines the optimum levels of product sampling builds on the dynamics of the innovation diffusion process. Using the Bass model as a base, this paper builds the optimal model group of product sampling of primary and contingent products by considering various pricing strategies. Then the paper makes parametric analysis on the optimal sampling by using genetic algorithm (GA). Our results suggest that free samples are mainly focus on the incubation time and the sampling of the primary product will make more Influence on the diffusion process than the sampling of the contingent product. Finally, further extensions of the models are also discussed.