On the afternoon of 7 April 2022, UIC was honored to invite Professor Yang Xiaoguang, a researcher from the Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to present an online sharing session on the theme of "Mathematical Mechanisms of Customer Building in the Digital Economy".

Professor Liu Wenbin, Dean of the Department of Business Administration, gave a welcome speech. Professor Liu Luchuan, from the Department of Finance, moderated the sharing.

Professor Liu Wenbin, Dean of the Department of Business Administration, gave a welcome speech

Professor Liu Luchuan, from the Department of Finance, moderated the sharing.

The sharing consisted of three parts: firstly about the key elements of the digital economy, then explained with the case of Ant Forest, and finally explored with two mathematical mechanisms.

Professor Yang started by reviewing the change of consumption patterns and the change of the Internet and mobile communication (ICT) on the business ecology, and emphasizing the buyer's economy is increasingly towards the individual and the self-identity. In Internet economy, the greatest value is to connect with end users to the greatest extent possible, to link all aspects of their lives, and to quickly meet their needs now and across time and place.

Using Ant Forest as an example, Professor Yang illustrated how the digital platform has used gamification strategies to build its customer base, especially young customers, and has succeeded in generating a huge 'pro-environmental spillover effect'. Prof. Yang presented the research process of "A Web Ethnography Study of Ant Forest", which found that hedonistic and beneficial motives dominate the short-term gamification drive path, while multiple motives mobilize to dominate the long-term gamification path, thus demonstrating the basic logic of Ant Forest's gamification to acquire customers and promote green consumption.

Finally, two numerical models are used to reveal the logical mechanisms behind the customer building model, in terms of internal sustainability building and external cascading mobilization forces. In the first model, the DeGroot Model and the CSC (Closed and Strongly Connected) model are used to derive the theoretical results: (1) The population can agree when and only when there is only one CSC subpopulation. (2) Consensus beliefs are determined by the CSC: individuals in the CSC subpopulation have a positive influence; any individuals not in the CSC have no influence. The second model, called the pull-fans (controlled-evaluation) model, examines the effects of cascading excitation and sustained impact, and theoretical results show that the desired agreement can be achieved as long as the group that captures it, exerts influence consistently, no matter how small the probability of each reception. Organized, spontaneous word-of-mouth propulsion among audiences produces faster and more cost-effective belief alignment than a single source of information.

The Lecture

Finally, Professor Yang summarized the topic of today's talk. During the Q&A session, Dean Liu, Professor Liu Luchuan and Dr. Lin Wu from the accounting department were all eager to ask questions, then Professor Yang interacted actively with audiences.

Question-and-Answer session

About the Speaker

Professor Yang Xiaoguang

Professor, Institute of Systems Science, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences