Transmission of information about consumer product quality and safety: a social media perspective

Purpose: This study aims to the information about consumer product quality and safety that can easily attract public attention and become the focus of public opinion. In recent years, the fast-growing social media have become an import platform for firms for releasing product quality and safety information and for firms and governments to hear public opinion. Design/methodology/approach: To explore how information about consumer product quality and safety gets disseminated and a public opinion is formed in social media, this paper proposes two information transmission models, one with government intervention and the other without government intervention, based on the theory of complex network. A simulation case study in MATLAB is conducted to verify the proposed models. Findings: Information transmission models were constructed, one without government intervention and one with government intervention. The influence of information transmission with government intervention was analyzed. MATLAB was used to simulate the Barabasi and Albert (BA)-based model to consider event information level, government information level and possible panic population proportion. The government intervention effect was evaluated. Originality/value: Based on a complex network, the derived transmission rule can provide decision-making support for monitoring and managing Web information of consumer product quality and safety.