[Abstract]

Emergence of Product Value from On-line Communications

Koichi Takahashi(1), Yukio Ohsawa(1),(2) and Naohiro Matsumura(3)
(1)Graduate School of Business Science, University of Tsukuba, Japan
(2)Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan
(3)Faculty of Economics, Osaka University, Japan



The value of a product is first given by the promoting vendor, but customers then find simple novel values to the product. When their simple awareness meet, new values emerge from their communications. This bottom-up value emergence is detected in this study by use of tools for chance discovery, on the topic trend of a surprising hit-product in the Japanese soft-drink market. This is an application study of methods of chance discovery.