In recent years, not only the functions of the product itself but also the entire customer experience has become important, and word-of-mouth (WOM) has become key to product diffusion. Product designers should avoid limiting themselves to one-way design until market launch. Instead, they need to analyze customer experiences and evaluations, including WOM, and continue rapid design iterations. This study constructs a product diffusion model to analyze the emergent behaviors generated by WOM. For model construction, we integrate System Dynamics as a macro-model and Multi-Agent Simulation as a micro-model. The introduction of MAS allows for the micro-level reproduction of adoption attitude distributions based on innovation diffusion theory and WOM effects. Simulation results revealed the impact of corporate investment ratios on diffusion patterns. Specifically, it was suggested that when delivery times are extended beyond an acceptable range, customer satisfaction plummets, which, through negative WOM, causes the loss of the ability to cross the chasm, or even causes a regression of an already crossed chasm.
Muramatsu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.