Optimal Marketing Strategies Over Social Networks

The authors discuss the use of social networks in implementing viral marketing strategies. While influence maximization has been studied in this context (see Chapter 24 of [10]), the authors study revenue maximization, arguably, a more natural objective. In this model, a buyer's decision to buy an item is influenced by the set of other buyers that own the item and the price at which the item is offered. The authors first argue why such strategies are reasonable and then show how to use recently developed set-function maximization techniques to find the right set of buyers to influence.