Service Selection Modeling in Networked Environments

Service selection research is an important area in consumer behavior analysis and the latter has been extensively studied in economics and sociology. In this paper, we present an analysis and numerical studies on the aggregate behavior of consumer choices under some realistic information networks, such as small-world and scale-free networks. We demonstrate that sparse and local connectivity in information networks will enable the aggregated customer choices to converge to multiple steady equilibriums. This is contrasted with the classical monopolistic steady equilibrium in full-meshed information network. Therefore, the topology of customer information networks has significant effect on the service selection equilibriums. Therefore, the customer behavior in realistic networked environments requires further study and may provide new insights in service models