759 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
3730 Walnut Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA19104
Phone: (215) 898-6532
Fax: (215) 898-2534
vdbulte@wharton.upenn.edu
Personal Website
Social contagion in new product trial, repeat, and quantity. New product diffusion with Simmelian joint attraction and repulsion between segments. Social contagion and marketing effects across stages of the new product adoption process. Testing Everett Rogers’ theory of how the speed of diffusion varies across products. Replication accuracy and the speed at which best practices are shared within organizations. Effective network structures for selling teams and buying teams. Social mechanisms underlying churn and margin benefits of customer referral programs. Patterns of product-market entry and product line extension in the U.S. mutual fund industry.
Christophe Van den Bulte Christophe Van den Bulte currently teaches Marketing Strategy in the MBA program. He has also taught the MBA and Executive MBA core course in Marketing Management, an MBA elective on Channel Management, undergraduate courses on Marketing Strategy and Channel Management, and PhD courses in Marketing Strategy, Mathematical Models in Marketing, and Social Network Analysis. His research focuses on two areas: new product diffusion and social networks. Current projects include analyzing the differential effects of spatial proximity and social networks on the adoption and prescription volume of a new drug by physicians; testing Everett Rogers’ theory of how the speed of diffusion varies across products; analyzing how replication accuracy affects the speed of transfer of best practices within organizations; identifying effective network structures for B2B sales teams and buying teams; analyzing social dynamics in customer churn within referral programs; and investigating patterns of product-market entries and product line extensions in the U.S. mutual fund industry. Professor Van den Bulte is Associate Editor at Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Research and the International Journal of Research in Marketing. He also serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing. He received his PhD in business administration from the Pennsylvania State University and his MA and BA degrees in applied economics from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
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| Current Research Papers | ||
| Raghuram Iyengar, Christophe Van den Bulte, Jeonghye Choi (2012), Distinguishing among Mechanisms of Social Contagion in New Product Adoption: Framework and Illustration | ||
| Nitin Bakshi, Kartik Hosanagar, Christophe Van den Bulte (2011), New Product Diffusion with Social Attraction and Repulsion | ||
| Brian R. Murtha, Sundar S. Bharadwaj, Christophe Van den Bulte (2011), Interlocking Networks Within and Between Firms: Implications for Developing Effective Solutions | ||
| Renana Peres, Christophe Van den Bulte (2010), How Customer Word of Mouth Affects the Benefits of New Product Exclusivity to Distributors | ||
| Joan Allatta, Raghuram Iyengar, Christophe Van den Bulte (2010), Social Network Integration after a Corporate Acquisition: How Cross-cutting Circles, Reciprocity, and Managerial Dominance Shape Networks | ||
| Publications | ||
| Gila E. Fruchter, Christophe Van den Bulte (2011), Why the Generalized Bass Model Leads to Odd Optimal Advertising Policies, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 28 (3), 218-230. | ||
| Philipp Schmitt, Bernd Skiera, Christophe Van den Bulte (2011), Why Customer Referrals Can Drive Stunning Profits, Harvard Business Review, 89 (June), 30. | ||
| Raghuram Iyengar, Christophe Van den Bulte, John Eichert, Bruce West, Thomas W. Valente (2011), How Social Networks and Opinion Leaders Affect the Adoption of New Products, GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 3 (1), 17-25. | ||
| Christophe Van den Bulte, Raghuram Iyengar (2011), Tricked by Truncation: Spurious Duration Dependence and Social Contagion in Hazard Models, Marketing Science, 30 (2), 233-248. | ||
| Raghuram Iyengar, Christophe Van den Bulte, Thomas W. Valente (2011), Further Reflections on Studying Social Influence in New Product Diffusion, Marketing Science, 30 (2), 230-232. | ||
| Awards | ||
| Best Reviewer Award, Journal of Marketing, 2007-2008 | ||
| ERIM Award for Top Academic Article, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2005 | ||
| Elected Member, Belgian American Educational Foundation, 2005 | ||
| Invitee, Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar Program, 2005 | ||
| Invitee, Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar Program, 2003 | ||
| MSI Leader Interview: Exploring the "Network" in Social Networks | ||
| Executive Education | ||
| Program Faculty, Competitive Marketing Strategy, Philadelphia | ||
Knowledge@Wharton ![]() |
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| 'Turning Social Capital into Economic Capital': Straight Talk about Word-of-mouth Marketing (07/21/2010) | ||
| Can Twitter Promote Itself into Profitability? (05/26/2010) | ||
| The Buzz Starts Here: Finding the First Mouth for Word-of-Mouth Marketing (03/04/2009) | ||
| Social Marketing: How Companies Are Generating Value from Customer Input (12/12/2007) | ||
| New Products (Like the iPhone): Announce Early or Go for the Surprise Rollout? (06/13/2007) | ||
| Product Placement in the Pews? Microtargeting Meets Megachurches (11/15/2006) | ||
| 'Influentials' and 'Imitators': How to Better Forecast the Sale of New Products (09/06/2006) |



