A model for collective behaviour propagation: a case study of video game industry

Many markets include a product and a platform product, where the product can only achieve its intended functions and performance in conjunction with or under the operation of its platform, such as a video game can only run on its game console. The growth of the user population of these products or services is a kind of collective behaviour propagation phenomenon. Here, questions come: how can we describe the collective behaviour propagation as a function of time? How the endogenous and exogenous social effects influence the collective behaviour propagation and how to quantify these two effects? In order to answer all these questions, an ordinary differential equation model is proposed to describe the growth of the user population of this class of markets. Firstly, a networked community is constructed, where users and prospective users are considered as nodes, and their relationship provides the method of building edges. Then, two fundamental influences of decision-making can be realized based on the network. A useful application of the model can be conceived and illustrated by one new database containing weekly sales of 25,237 video games released in the home and handle consoles and personal computer in USA, UK, Germany, France and Japan from 1989 to 2018. Results show that historical sales profile of a video game follows the growth equation, and the numerical procedure for finding the model parameters allows the market size, and the relative effectiveness of customer service and promotional efforts to be estimated according to the available historical data.