Activation Threshold Model
1/5, Domino Effect
I remember that in those days, the school triggered many protests of students "stop eating" due to the quality of the food in the cafeteria, but such activities were very difficult to succeed. Can't handle it.
However, there was an inexplicable movement. For two consecutive days at noon, a large number of students were blocked at the entrance of the cafeteria, and a large number of meals were not sold. As for why it happened this time, I asked one of the leading activists afterwards. He said that it was the same at the beginning. Some people ate and some didn't. But suddenly, for a period of time, the number of people participating in the action increased sharply, and no one deliberately Organization, so he didn't know what was going on.
This is a real mystery that I didn't solve until I read a sociology paper "The Threshold (Sound "Jade") Value Model of Collective Action.
Many people have heard of the "weak ties theory". Mark Granovetter, the sociologist who first proposed this theory, noticed a phenomenon when he studied collective action along the "weak ties theory":
Many careful The collective actions planned are all thunder and rain in the end, and the large-scale riots in history are all unorganized actions caused by accidental events. These actions are not very noticeable at first, but at a certain point, The size suddenly increased exponentially.
In order to explain this phenomenon, Granovetter proposed the concept of "action threshold" and used the "domino effect" to describe the logic of collective action, explaining this phenomenon very succinctly.The sociological phenomenon of
is also instructive in marketing:
Why are some products popular at first, but then disappeared? Are there some products that were tepid at first, but finally became the new favorite of the whole people?
From the actions of a few people to the large-scale collective action, what has changed in the middle?
2/5, activation threshold
A colleague strongly advises you to take part in an "opposition against 996". Although you \(^o^)/ agree with their concept, you are somewhat worried.
Are you going to go? Granovetter believes that it depends on two factors:
One is the trade-off between benefits and costs (including risks), which Granovetter calls the "utility index". The stronger the "utility index", the more likely you are to participate. Large;
Two is the number of other participants. When a person pays attention to group activities, if he finds that many people (especially relatives and friends around him) have already participated, he may consider participating. Granovetter calls it a "social signal". The stronger the "social signal", the less likely you are to participate - you need to see a lot of people participating in order for you to participate.
There is a relationship between these two factors. The stronger the "utility index", the weaker the "social signal" required. For example, if you are a firm "anti-996", then you are an activity The activists and even the organizers do not need any "social signals" at all.
Therefore, "social signals" become an inverse indicator of "utility index", and Granovetter also designed an "activation threshold":
If you have 100 friends around you, you only need to see 20 people participating in activity A , you are willing to participate, then the “activation threshold” for activity A for you is 20; activity B needs to see 50 people participating, and you are willing to participate, then the “activation threshold” for activity B is 50.
Why some activities can be successful, and some activities just can't be done, the concept of "activation threshold" is introduced, which is very easy to understand.
The same activity, the same group, and different people have different "activation thresholds":
has a threshold of 0, which is the person who actively launched the activity.
If there is a person with a threshold of 1 in this group, as long as someone starts, he will participate, so that there are two people in this activity.
Next, as long as there is one person with a threshold of 2 in the crowd, the active team will expand to 3 people. If there are 2 people with a threshold of 2, or another person with a threshold of 3, it will become 4 people .
This "contagion" continues, and once the threshold of the person with the smallest "activation threshold" is higher than the number of participants, the number of active people will stop growing.
Granovetter likened this "infection" to "dominoes", which "fall down" one by one as long as there is no break in the middle.
This explains why some well-organized campaigns are not necessarily successful - because there is a break in the "activation threshold"; on the contrary, if a campaign attracts attention from a very diverse group of people (representing an average distribution of thresholds) ), the possibility of triggering large-scale collective participation has greatly increased.
Then why do some activities, which were tepid at first, suddenly broke out? Is this "tipping point" regular? Or some "key man"?
"Activation Threshold" helped us calculate a perfect answer.
3/5, the critical point of the outbreak of collective action
For most of the participants in the activities, the "activation thresholds" are normally distributed, that is, most people's "activation thresholds" are concentrated in the middle section, and the more you go to the two ends, the smaller the "activation threshold".
Those who are in the peak period will definitely not be the key figures of the event, because they are all fodder and need a considerable number of people to participate in order to participate. The people on the far right of
are of course not the key players, and they will hardly be involved in this activity.
So is the small threshold crowd at the far left the key person? After all, for any activity, there must be at least one person with a 0 threshold.
Looking back at the logic of the collective action just now, you will find that the person whose threshold is 0 is not the key person. The threshold is 0, which means that this person is a provocateur, and any strange proposition has its firm believers. Although such people are rare, there is never a shortage of people who will take the initiative to jump out. Similarly for
, people with a threshold of 1 are not difficult to find.
So the "key person" is between the "low threshold" and the "middle threshold". How much is it?
Speaking of this, I want to introduce a statistical concept "standard deviation", which can measure the degree of difference in a set of data. The calculation method is the opening of the sum of the squares of the difference between each individual's value and the group average. Fang (if you don't understand, please Baidu by yourself).
Granovetter assumes that there are 100 people, and the average activation threshold of an activity is 25, which is a standard normal distribution, that is, the peak value is also 25. He simulated various situations with a computer, and the relationship between the statistical standard deviation and the final number of participants in the activity, The result is the following graph:
When the standard deviation of the threshold for this group is 0, which is 25 for all people, it is conceivable that they will only complain and not take any action.
Based on this inference, when the standard deviation is 1, 2, 3..., large-scale collective action is almost impossible, and the standard deviation is low, indicating that most people are distributed around 25, and naturally they cannot afford a low enough value. Threshold people.
Further inference, the standard deviation becomes larger, 4, 5, 6, 7..., there are still very few participants.
But when the standard deviation of the threshold reached 12, a miracle happened, and the number of participants suddenly increased from single digits to 100, all of which were activated!
The legendary "event critical point" really appeared.
Why was there almost no movement before, and when the standard deviation is 12, all groups will be activated at once? What is the magic of a standard deviation of 12?
The knowledge of statistics comes in handy: in a standard normal distribution model with a peak activation threshold of 25 and a standard deviation of 12, 68% of people are in the threshold range of 13-37, and 16% are below 13. 16% were above 37 - every card in the domino, finally spread to the right distance.
What happens when the standard deviation continues to increase? The standard deviation of the
threshold continues to rise. Before reaching 33, all 100 people have been activated. The distribution of action thresholds representing this group is very uniform, which is easy to cause dominoes.
But if it exceeds 33, the number of activations starts to slowly decline again, and finally stays at the scale of 50 participants, what does this mean?
High standard deviation means that there are too many individual differences in the group, there are many active and inert elements, and there are fewer people in the middle state. And there is a gap, and only half of the people who eventually participate in the action.
It can be seen from this experiment: is an action that is a little difficult to participate in. As long as the number of objects is large enough, the activation threshold is normally distributed, and the flow of information is not obstructed, then, whether the action will break out, there is only one core factor— The degree of differentiation of the population can neither be too high nor too low.
This theory also applies to the field of marketing.
4/5, movie box office activation threshold model
Why do some movies in the Spring Festival file have good box office at the beginning, but lack stamina? Some movies have good reputation and rich commercial elements, but the box office is not popular? Are there some movies that have the same box office at the beginning, but can rely on word of mouth to achieve a counter-attack at the box office?
80% of viewers now buy tickets online. It's normal to check Douban ratings or glance at Maoyan ratings when buying tickets. Why can't these high-rated movies set off the box office?
The release period of the movie is only one month. Marketing needs to quickly detonate the market in the shortest time. However, movie consumption is an action that relies heavily on word of mouth. Movies need to maximize the "activation threshold model" to achieve high box office in the short term.
According to the activation threshold, the audience can be divided into four categories:
audience with zero activation threshold: does not need any word of mouth, only the subject, director, star, sequel and other elements are needed to decide the viewing;
audience with low activation threshold: actively Go to Douban or Maoyan to see the ratings, and decide which movie to watch based on Internet word-of-mouth;
Average activation threshold audience: never cares about movie news, only relatives and friends say a movie is good to watch.
High activation threshold audience: must have enough word of mouth from relatives and friends around to enter the theater.
The generation of the movie box office is the process of the "dominoes" falling: first, the movie's selling point is conveyed to the "zero activation threshold audience" before the movie is released, so as to realize the box office on the first day of release; Internet word-of-mouth drives "audiences with a low activation threshold" to achieve the box office in the first week; finally, the word-of-mouth of the second batch of audiences in social activities activates other audiences and brings the box office for the remaining three weeks.
What affects the box office is the peak value and standard deviation of the action threshold of the movie corresponding to the audience:
The peak value is low and the standard deviation is large: represents a small audience with polarized preferences, and is often a movie or art film with a niche theme, with a low box office and a high standard deviation. Stable ("One Second" "Persian Lesson").
has a high peak value and a large standard deviation: represents a wide audience of themes, polarized word of mouth, uncertain box office, and high dependence on publicity and schedules ("My Sister", "Eight Hundred").
has a low peak value and a small standard deviation: has a small subject matter, and the quality is very mediocre, so there is no need to analyze it.
Activation Threshold Model
1/5, Domino Effect
I remember that in those days, the school triggered many protests of students "stop eating" due to the quality of the food in the cafeteria, but such activities were very difficult to succeed. Can't handle it.
However, there was an inexplicable movement. For two consecutive days at noon, a large number of students were blocked at the entrance of the cafeteria, and a large number of meals were not sold. As for why it happened this time, I asked one of the leading activists afterwards. He said that it was the same at the beginning. Some people ate and some didn't. But suddenly, for a period of time, the number of people participating in the action increased sharply, and no one deliberately Organization, so he didn't know what was going on.
This is a real mystery that I didn't solve until I read a sociology paper "The Threshold (Sound "Jade") Value Model of Collective Action.
Many people have heard of the "weak ties theory". Mark Granovetter, the sociologist who first proposed this theory, noticed a phenomenon when he studied collective action along the "weak ties theory":
Many careful The collective actions planned are all thunder and rain in the end, and the large-scale riots in history are all unorganized actions caused by accidental events. These actions are not very noticeable at first, but at a certain point, The size suddenly increased exponentially.
In order to explain this phenomenon, Granovetter proposed the concept of "action threshold" and used the "domino effect" to describe the logic of collective action, explaining this phenomenon very succinctly. The sociological phenomenon of
is also instructive in marketing:
Why are some products popular at first, but then disappeared? Some products are tepid at first,In the end, it became the new favorite of the whole people?
From the actions of a few people to the large-scale collective action, what has changed in the middle?
2/5, activation threshold
A colleague strongly advises you to take part in an "opposition against 996". Although you \(^o^)/ agree with their concept, you are somewhat worried.
Are you going to go? Granovetter believes that it depends on two factors:
One is the trade-off between benefits and costs (including risks), which Granovetter calls the "utility index". The stronger the "utility index", the more likely you are to participate. Large;
Two is the number of other participants. When a person pays attention to group activities, if he finds that many people (especially relatives and friends around him) have already participated, he may consider participating. Granovetter calls it a "social signal". The stronger the "social signal", the less likely you are to participate - you need to see a lot of people participating in order for you to participate.
There is a relationship between these two factors. The stronger the "utility index", the weaker the "social signal" required. For example, if you are a firm "anti-996", then you are an activity The activists and even the organizers do not need any "social signals" at all.
Therefore, "social signals" become an inverse indicator of "utility index", and Granovetter also designed an "activation threshold":
If you have 100 friends around you, you only need to see 20 people participating in activity A , you are willing to participate, then the “activation threshold” for activity A for you is 20; activity B needs to see 50 people participating, and you are willing to participate, then the “activation threshold” for activity B is 50.
Why some activities can be successful, and some activities just can't be done,Introducing the concept of "activation threshold", it is very easy to understand.
The same activity, the same group, and different people have different "activation thresholds":
has a threshold of 0, which is the person who actively launched the activity.
If there is a person with a threshold of 1 in this group, as long as someone starts, he will participate, so that there are two people in this activity.
Next, as long as there is one person with a threshold of 2 in the crowd, the active team will expand to 3 people. If there are 2 people with a threshold of 2, or another person with a threshold of 3, it will become 4 people .
This "contagion" continues, and once the threshold of the person with the smallest "activation threshold" is higher than the number of participants, the number of active people will stop growing.
Granovetter likened this "infection" to "dominoes", which "fall down" one by one as long as there is no break in the middle.
This explains why some well-organized campaigns are not necessarily successful - because there is a break in the "activation threshold"; on the contrary, if a campaign attracts attention from a very diverse group of people (representing an average distribution of thresholds) ), the possibility of triggering large-scale collective participation has greatly increased.
Then why do some activities, which were tepid at first, suddenly broke out? Is this "tipping point" regular? Or some "key man"?
"Activation Threshold" helped us calculate a perfect answer.
3/5, the critical point of the outbreak of collective action
For most of the participants in the activities, the "activation thresholds" are normally distributed, that is, most people's "activation thresholds" are concentrated in the middle section, and the more you go to the two ends, the smaller the "activation threshold".
The person who is in the peak period will not be the key person in the activity.Because they are all grass, they need a considerable number of people to participate in order to participate. The people on the far right of
are of course not the key players, and they will hardly be involved in this activity.
So is the small threshold crowd at the far left the key person? After all, for any activity, there must be at least one person with a 0 threshold.
Looking back at the logic of the collective action just now, you will find that the person whose threshold is 0 is not the key person. The threshold is 0, which means that this person is a provocateur, and any strange proposition has its firm believers. Although such people are rare, there is never a shortage of people who will take the initiative to jump out. Similarly for
, people with a threshold of 1 are not difficult to find.
So the "key person" is between the "low threshold" and the "middle threshold". How much is it?
Speaking of this, I want to introduce a statistical concept "standard deviation", which can measure the degree of difference in a set of data. The calculation method is the opening of the sum of the squares of the difference between each individual's value and the group average. Fang (if you don't understand, please Baidu by yourself).
Granovetter assumes that there are 100 people, and the average activation threshold of an activity is 25, which is a standard normal distribution, that is, the peak value is also 25. He simulated various situations with a computer, and the relationship between the statistical standard deviation and the final number of participants in the activity, The result is the following graph:
When the standard deviation of the threshold for this group is 0, which is 25 for all people, it is conceivable that they will only complain and not take any action.
Based on this inference, when the standard deviation is 1, 2, 3..., large-scale collective action is almost impossible, and the standard deviation is low, indicating that most people are distributed around 25, and naturally they cannot afford a low enough value. Threshold people.
Further inference, the standard deviation becomes larger, 4, 5, 6, 7...,Participants are still minimal.
But when the standard deviation of the threshold reached 12, a miracle happened, and the number of participants suddenly increased from single digits to 100, all of which were activated!
The legendary "event critical point" really appeared.
Why was there almost no movement before, and when the standard deviation is 12, all groups will be activated at once? What is the magic of a standard deviation of 12?
The knowledge of statistics comes in handy: in a standard normal distribution model with a peak activation threshold of 25 and a standard deviation of 12, 68% of people are in the threshold range of 13-37, and 16% are below 13. 16% were above 37 - every card in the domino, finally spread to the right distance.
What happens when the standard deviation continues to increase? The standard deviation of the
threshold continues to rise. Before reaching 33, all 100 people have been activated. The distribution of action thresholds representing this group is very uniform, which is easy to cause dominoes.
But if it exceeds 33, the number of activations starts to slowly decline again, and finally stays at the scale of 50 participants, what does this mean?
High standard deviation means that there are too many individual differences in the group, there are many active and inert elements, and there are fewer people in the middle state. And there is a gap, and only half of the people who eventually participate in the action.
It can be seen from this experiment: is an action that is a little difficult to participate in. As long as the number of objects is large enough, the activation threshold is normally distributed, and the flow of information is not obstructed, then, whether the action will break out, there is only one core factor— The degree of differentiation of the population should not be too high,It can't be too low either.
This theory also applies to the field of marketing.
4/5, movie box office activation threshold model
Why do some movies in the Spring Festival file have good box office at the beginning, but lack stamina? Some movies have good reputation and rich commercial elements, but the box office is not popular? Are there some movies that have the same box office at the beginning, but can rely on word of mouth to achieve a counter-attack at the box office?
80% of viewers now buy tickets online. It's normal to check Douban ratings or glance at Maoyan ratings when buying tickets. Why can't these high-rated movies set off the box office?
The release period of the movie is only one month. Marketing needs to quickly detonate the market in the shortest time. However, movie consumption is an action that relies heavily on word of mouth. Movies need to maximize the "activation threshold model" to achieve high box office in the short term.
According to the activation threshold, the audience can be divided into four categories:
audience with zero activation threshold: does not need any word of mouth, only the subject, director, star, sequel and other elements are needed to decide the viewing;
audience with low activation threshold: actively Go to Douban or Maoyan to see the ratings, and decide which movie to watch based on Internet word-of-mouth;
Average activation threshold audience: never cares about movie news, only relatives and friends say a movie is good to watch.
High activation threshold audience: must have enough word of mouth from relatives and friends around to enter the theater.
The generation of the movie box office is the process of the "dominoes" falling: first, the movie's selling point is conveyed to the "zero activation threshold audience" before the movie is released, so as to realize the box office on the first day of release; Internet word-of-mouth drives "audience with a low activation threshold" to achieve box office in the first week; finally, the second group of audience's word-of-mouth in social activities activates other audiences.Bring the remaining three weeks at the box office.
What affects the box office is the peak value and standard deviation of the action threshold of the movie corresponding to the audience:
The peak value is low and the standard deviation is large: represents a small audience with polarized preferences, and is often a movie or art film with a niche theme, with a low box office and a high standard deviation. Stable ("One Second" "Persian Lesson").
has a high peak value and a large standard deviation: represents a wide audience of themes, polarized word of mouth, uncertain box office, and high dependence on publicity and schedules ("My Sister", "Eight Hundred").
has a low peak value and a small standard deviation: has a small subject matter, and the quality is very mediocre, so there is no need to analyze it.
has a high peak value and a small standard deviation: has a wide audience and has a relatively consistent evaluation. If the evaluation is good, it has the potential for high box office ("On the Cliff", "Hello, Li Huanying"), but if the evaluation is poor, you can only rely on "Zero Action Threshold Audience" depends entirely on the ability of Xuanfa ("Your Wedding", "Detective Chinatown 3").
Therefore, in addition to the two movie factors of peak value and standard deviation, a reasonable publicity strategy is also very important:
For regular schedule movies, "audiences with low activation threshold" also account for the largest share, and the Internet word-of-mouth of "audiences with zero activation threshold" Most importantly, video quality comes first.
But the festival schedule is different. If the box office is to exceed one billion, it must reach more than 500 million in the first week, which means more than 10 million viewers. A large number of "zero-activation threshold audiences" are needed, and the requirements for publicity are very high.
Therefore, for many excellent films, because the subject matter is not suitable for the schedule, or there is a problem with the announcement, or the schedule cannot be fixed, resulting in too few "zero-activation threshold audience", even if word of mouth comes out later,However, when the "dominoes" fell to the "average activation threshold audience", the schedule of the movie was already very small, and this group of audiences were very picky about the viewing time, resulting in the final box office and word-of-mouth disproportionate.
The marketing of ordinary movies is to use selling points with sufficient characteristics and high-intensity publicity to impress audiences with zero activation threshold, and then use the quality of the film to impress audiences with low activation thresholds.
The top three movies at the box office during the Spring Festival category and other strong programs must stimulate enough audiences with "average activation threshold"; phenomenal movies need to reach the "high activation threshold audience" layer.
5/5, model summary
The content of this article is a bit complicated. Finally, to summarize:
"Activation Threshold Model" explains a sociological phenomenon in very simple mathematical language:
As long as there are enough people in a group and it is normally distributed, the core factor affecting the final scale is the "activation threshold" Standard deviation - There must be a standard deviation that becomes the "tipping point" of the scale of the activity, from a small action that no one pays attention to to a collective action of a large group, or from the action of a small group of people to a large scale of the whole society. sports.
The sociological significance of the model:
The differences in opinions of a group on many sensitive issues are called the standard deviation of the group. Then if there is only one voice in this group, the standard deviation is zero or very small, and the result is the most stable state;
As the state of one voice is broken, the standard deviation becomes larger, and various voices appear, there will always be one The "critical state" of standard deviation, the group will quickly enter a state of extreme instability, and sensitive issues trigger large-scale collective action.
But if the standard deviation continues to increase, a group of opinions starts to polarize,This society will enter a relatively stable state again, and collective actions triggered by sensitive issues will still exist, but the scale will be reduced to half.
Finally, the marketing implications of the model:
The future market for a new product depends on the peak and standard deviation in the "action threshold model" of the audience for that product.
The new product marketing plan should distinguish between different "action threshold models". The goal of is to spread to as many "high activation threshold" audiences as possible with the least cost. differentiated.
In addition, the "activation threshold theory" assumes that information can be disseminated indiscriminately, that is, everyone can judge in real time how many people have participated in the event, but in real life, there are always obstacles to information dissemination, how does make high activation threshold audiences see it? The consumption behavior of these "low activation threshold" users is often the difficulty of communication.
was first published on the WeChat public account of "Man and God (ID: tongyipaocha)".
Finally, to summarize:"Activation Threshold Model" explains a sociological phenomenon in very simple mathematical language:
As long as there are enough people in a group and it is normally distributed, the core factor affecting the final scale is the "activation threshold" Standard deviation - There must be a standard deviation that becomes the "tipping point" of the scale of the activity, from a small action that no one pays attention to to a collective action of a large group, or from the action of a small group of people to a large scale of the whole society. sports.
The sociological significance of the model:
The differences in opinions of a group on many sensitive issues are called the standard deviation of the group. Then if there is only one voice in this group, the standard deviation is zero or very small, and the result is the most stable state;
As the state of one voice is broken, the standard deviation becomes larger, and various voices appear, there will always be one The "critical state" of standard deviation, the group will quickly enter a state of extreme instability, and sensitive issues trigger large-scale collective action.
But if the standard deviation continues to increase, the views of a group will start to become polarized, and the society will enter a relatively stable state. There will still be collective actions triggered by sensitive issues, but the scale will be reduced to half.
Finally, the marketing implications of the model:
The future market for a new product depends on the peak and standard deviation in the "action threshold model" of the audience for that product.
The new product marketing plan should distinguish between different "action threshold models". The goal of is to spread to as many "high activation threshold" audiences as possible with the least cost. differentiated.
In addition, the "activation threshold theory" assumes that information can be disseminated indiscriminately, that is, everyone can judge in real time how many people have participated in the event, but in real life, there are always obstacles to information dissemination, how does make high activation threshold audiences see it? The consumption behavior of these "low activation threshold" users is often the difficulty of communication.
was first published on the WeChat public account of "Man and God (ID: tongyipaocha)".
