A Mutual Independent Cascade Model for Customer Behavior Propagation

model of spreading behaviors, influences, new trends and innovations through social networks has beenstudied in a number of domains. these may include the diffusion of medical and technological innovations, the suddenand widespread adoption of strategies in game-theoretic settings, and the effects of word of mouth in the promotion ofnew products. one of the most important facts that is neglected in previous spread models is “considering cascadingnegative opinions”. this important fact shows that negative opinions may originate and propagate in populations asmuch as positive opinions and even they are stronger and more dominant. in this paper we propose a new model ofinfluence cascade called independent cascade with positive and negative wom (icpn). icpn models someimportant facts that people may encounter in a social environment. these facts include negativity bias, theasymmetric behavior of negative and positive wom, and different types of consumer complaints behaviors.moreover, the influence maximization problem is formulated in this model and also, we show that icpn maintainssubmodularity in this problem. this fact allows a simple greedy approximation algorithm for maximizing the positive influence within a ratio of approximation.