Description

"Whether they are called 'opinion leaders', 'influentials', 'influencers', 'e-fluentials', 'hubs', 'mavens', or by some other name, the idea that a small number of 'special' individuals have an important effect on the opinions, beliefs, and consumption habits of a large number of 'ordinary' individuals has become conventional wisdom in the word-of-mouth marketing community. In this paper I challenge this idea, which I label the 'influentials hypothesis' both in terms of the available empirical evidence, and also in terms of its theoretical underpinnings, and argue that it has never been adequately demonstrated, or even precisely specified. I also discuss how biases inherent to anecdotal evidence have enabled the hypothesis to remain popular in spite of its serious shortcomings, and argue that influentials identified retrospectively are accidental products of circumstance that are unlikely to repeat. Finally, I conclude by sketching out some alternative approaches to accomodating influence processes in marketing campaigns."