Marketing Seminar（2017-25）

Title: Prelaunch Demand Estimation

Speaker: Xinyu Cao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Time: Wednesday, 15 November, 13:30-15:30

Location: Room K01, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

Demand estimation is important for new-product strategies, but is challenging in the ab- sence of actual sales data. We develop a cost-effective method to estimate the demand of new products based on choice experiments. Our premise is that there exists a structural relationship between manifested demand and the probability of consumer choice being realized. We illustrate the mechanism using a theory model, in which consumers learn their product valuation through effort and their effort incentive depends on the realization probability. We run a large-scale choice experiment on a mobile game platform, where we randomize the price and realization probability of a new product. We find reduced-form support of the theoretical prediction and the decision effort mechanism. We then estimate a structural model of consumer choice. The structural estimates allow us to infer actual demand from choices of moderate to small realization probabilities.  

Introduction:

Xinyu Cao, Ph.D. Candidate in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her research interests are:

? Substantive: Market Research, Digital Marketing, Social Media, Emerging Markets

? Methodology: Field Experiments, Applied Game Theory, Structural Modeling

Your participation is warmly welcomed!