Customer-Choice behavior modeling with latent perceptual variables

摘要

A customer-choice behavior model for analyzing the demand for telecommunications and Internet services is presented. Various new services like IP telephone are intensively offered in the telecommunication market. There is a growing need to forecast the service demands by considering future scenarios. We have proposed a "Scenario Simulation" framework to analyse how market structures adapts to changes in the market. Accurate Scenario Simulation requires using a detailed customer-choice model to capture purchase behavior. Each customer is assumed to choose a service with his or her preferences and decision process. Because there are many services on the market, awareness and perceptions of new services are key points for improving the quality and the accuracy of customer-choice behavior modeling. The modeling methodology that we propose enables us to better explain the demand for "telecommunication and Internet services" using latent perceptual variables such as awareness and perceptions. To demonstrate the methodology, we use an example of forecasting the demand of IP telephone services using original survey data. The application shows the importance of the perceptual variables.