Social Anti-Percolation, Resistance and Negative Word-of-Mouth

A known result from marketing research is that many products fail to meet their expected market share. A possible explanation for this phenomenon is the inherent resistance of the social network, that is greatly increased if effects of negative word of mouth (NWOM) are taken into account. Here we suggest an extension for the Social Percolation framework that incorporates NWOM. The proposed models are subjected to computer simulations, and the results show that the percolation threshold increases considerably. This new variant of percolation models presents physical properties that are different than the standard percolation model, and possibly even a first-order phase transition. The model is also discussed in the marketing context.