Small-world experiment, Six Degrees of Separation, common pathways, metabolic network, average path-length, clustering co-efficient

Relationship Marketing, which is at the heart of marketing management, inherits a small-world-type network characterized by short path-lengths. At a strategic level the discipline can gain from modelling on Stanley Milgram’s (1967) small-world experiment on average path length for social networks. The relationship marketing can consciously map the ‘average number of steps’ along the shortest paths for all possible pairs of social network nodes to configure a model that can measure efficiency of achieving a certain response from the task of information-sharing emphasizing on customer retention and satisfaction and even a transaction value. These efforts are expected to design innovative collaborative and social communication channels to push the agenda of relationship marketing by developing and implementing appropriate marketing plan to stimulate referrals (referral marketing). It also can create certain demographic and customer service data pervading all the spaces of referral marketing covering internal markets, influence markets, and customer markets and supplier markets. Thus, the sub-markets, for example government regulators and consumer associations falling under influence markets, can be better targeted with a laser-precision. The research explores the complexities in designing such a model based on Milgram's (1967) small-world experiment combined with other inspired models such as Metcalfe's law, Scott Feld's friendship paradox, Kevin Bacon's six degree

[1] Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.)
[2] Keesing, Roger and Strathern, Andrew (1988). Cultural Anthropology. A Contemporary Perspective (Forth Worth, TX, USA: Harcourt Brace and Company) p. 165
[3] Dunbar, R.I.M. (1993) Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 681-735 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) <www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~johnson/COGS184/3Dunbar93.pdf > 30th April 2014
[4] Milgram, Stanley (May 1967) The Small-World Problem, Psychology Today, vol. 1, no. 1, pp 61‐67
[5] Ross, Sheldon M. (1996) Stochastic processes (NY: Wiley)
[6] Pool, Ithiel de Sola Pool and Kochen, Manfred (1978) Contacts and Influence, Social Networks, 1 (1978/79)5-5 1
<https://www.sfu.ca/cmns/courses/marontate/2009/801/ClassFolders/jmckinnon/(0)%20Contacts%20and%20influence.pdf > Accessed on 25 April 2014
[7] Rapoport, Anatol and Horvath, W.J. (1960) "The theoretical channel capacity of a single neuron as determined by various coding systems", in: Information and Control, 3(4):335-350
[8] Milgram, Stanley (May 1967) The Small-World Problem, Psychology Today, vol. 1, Issue no. 1, p 65
[9] Dempster, A. P., Laird, N. M. and Rubin, D. B. (1977) Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm (with discussion). J. R. Statist. Soc. B, 39, 1–38
Diebolt, J. and Robert, C. P. (1994) Estimation of finite mixture distributions through Bayesian sampling. J. R. Statist. Soc.B, 56, 363–375.
[10] Milgram, Stanley (May 1967) The Small-World Problem, Psychology Today, vol. 1, Issue no. 1, pp 62-63
[11] Milgram, Stanley (May 1967) The Small-World Problem, Psychology Today, vol. 1, Issue no. 1, p 63
[12] Milgram, Stanley (May 1967) The Small-World Problem, Psychology Today, vol. 1, Issue no. 1, p 66
[13] Watts, Duncan J. and Strogatz, Steven H. (June 1998) Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks, Nature Vol. 393 (Macmillan) p 440
[14] Wu, Chai Wah (2007) Synchronization in Complex Networks of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems (Hackensack, NJ and London: World Scientific Publishing Co.) p 38
[15] Watts, Duncan J. and Strogatz, Steven H. (June 1998) Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks, Nature Vol. 393 (Macmillan) p 440
[16] Watts, Duncan J. and Strogatz, Steven H. (June 1998) Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks, Nature Vol. 393 (Macmillan) p 441
[17] Kaire Põder, (2009) "The evolution of non-cooperative behaviour: the case of post-transitional Estonia", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 4 Iss: 3, pp.301 - 31 &
        Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) p 8 <www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~gchen/pdf/CW-CASM03-overview.pdf> Accessed 10 April 2014
[18] Ibid.,
[19] Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) P14 <www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~gchen/pdf/CW-CASM03-overview.pdf> Accessed 10 April 2014
[20] Ibid.,
[21] Wang, X. F. and Chen, G. (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Ffree and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine p9
 <www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~gchen/pdf/CW-CASM03-overview.pdf> Accessed 10 April 2014
[22] Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) p 9 <www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~gchen/pdf/CW-CASM03-overview.pdf> Accessed 10 April 2014
[23] Holland, P. W. and Leinhardt, S. (1971) Transitivity in structural models of small groups. Comparative Group Studies 2: 107–124
[24] Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) p 10 <www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~gchen/pdf/CW-CASM03-overview.pdf> Accessed 10 April 2014
[25] Ibid.,
[26] Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) p 11 <www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~gchen/pdf/CW-CASM03-overview.pdf> Accessed 10 April 2014
[27] Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) p 12 <www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~gchen/pdf/CW-CASM03-overview.pdf> Accessed 10 April 2014
[28] Ibid.,
[29] Ibid.,
[30] K. Kaneko (ed.) (1992) Coupled Map Lattices, World Scientific Pub. Co., Singapore.
[31] L. O. Chua (1998)  CNN: A Paradigm for Complexity, World Scientific, Singapore.
[32] Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) p 18
[33] Ibid.,
[34] Wang, Xiao Fan and Chen, Guanrong (First Quarter 2003) Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and Beyond, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (Digital Vision) p 16
[35] Jovchelovitch, Sandra (July 2011) Concepts and Theoretical Inspirations (London: LSE) <http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/undergroundsociabilities/pdf/resources/concepts.pdf > Accessed 10th April 2014
[36] Travers, Jeffrey and  Milgram (Dec, 1969) An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem, Stanley, Sociometry, Vol. 32, No. 4 pp. 425-443