Swarm Shopping - The Simulation of Herd Behavior

摘要

This paper asks a new question: how we can intervene in the collective shopping behavior of self-organized group of customers in the supermarket. And then how we can measure it's influence on overall shopping pattern. We try to answer the question by proposing a simulation model with the help of animats (artificial customers), whereby animats become aware of other animats' real-time shopping inventory and may hence be influenced by their purchases and the levels of purchases. This simulation sets to provide the answers of questions like the percentage of increase in sales given real-time purchase information to other customers, and a platform to generate herd behavior. This paper provides several dimensions to look for influencing customers via feedback, real-time marketing, target advertisement and on-demand promotions. Several other parameters have been discussed including the herd behavior, fake customers, privacy, and optimality of sales-price margin to name a few.