'Spending Money' and 'Having Friends': The Influence of Social Networks on Consumers' Choice of Means for Goal Achievement

Marketing scholars and practitioners are increasingly interested in modelling individual consumer decision-making in large scale networks. We intend to investigate to which degree consumers use monetary investments and social relationships as two central strategies in goal-directed decision-making and propose that their preferential selection is dependent on the characteristics of consumers’ social networks. To test our conceptual model we collected longitudinal network data from one of the world’s leading providers of online games. First results indicate that spending money and having friends increase consumers’ goal achievement. However, both means are subject to declining marginal utility. This effect is stronger for monetary investments than for social relationships, suggesting that consumers benefit even at higher rates from social resources. Our research has major implications for marketing scholars and practitioners interested in targeted network interventions, models for network revenue predictions, and consumer lifecycles.