Word of Mouth, Observed Adoptions, and Anime-Watching Decisions: The Role of the Personal vs. the Community Network

We quantify the effects of others' adoptions and word of mouth (volume and valence) on consumers' product adoption decisions. We differentiate between the effects of word of mouth and observed adoptions from friends (personal network) and the effects of word of mouth and observed adoptions from the whole community (community network). Understanding the relative importance of word of mouth and observed adoptions at each network level provides crucial guidance for companies regarding their information provision and platform design strategies. Our unique data come from an online anime (Japanese cartoon) platform containing individual-level data on users' networks, anime adoptions, forum posts, and ratings of anime series. Our results reveal that both word of mouth (volume and valence) and observed adoptions from the community network have significant positive effects on individual users' anime-watching decisions. Furthermore, this finding also holds true for word of mouth and observed adoptions coming from the personal network. Comparing the magnitudes of the effects of word of mouth and observed adoptions across both network levels, we find that word-of-mouth valence from the community network is the largest driver among the social learning forces we study. Thus our results show that word of mouth and observed adoptions provide unique and different information that individuals use in their anime-watching decisions and that the community network is the primary source of information driving anime adoptions.