Abstract
We investigate a factor of the `network effect' that affects on communication service markets by a multi-agent based simulation approach. The network effect is one of a market characteristic, whereby the benefit of a service or a product increase with use. So far, the network effect has been studied in terms of macroscopic metrics, and interaction patterns of consumers in the market were often ignored. To investigate an infulence of structures of the interaction patterns, we propose a multi-agent based model for a communication serivce market, in which embedded complex network structures are considered as an interaction pattern of agents. Using several complex network models as the interaction patterns, we study the dynamics of a market in which two providers are competing. By a series of simulations, we show that the structural properties of the complex networks, such as the clustering coefficient and degree correlations, are the major factors of the network effect. We also discuss an adequate model of the interaction pattern for reproducing the market dynamics in the real world by performing simulations exploiting with a real data of social network.
