Collective purchase behavior toward retail price changes

Hiromichi Ueno, Tsutomu Watanabe, Hideki Takayasu and Misako Takayasu

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2011, vol. 390, issue 3, 499-504

Abstract: By analyzing a huge amount of point-of-sale data collected from Japanese supermarkets, we find power law relationships between price and sales numbers. The estimated values of the exponents of these power laws depend on the category of products; however, they are independent of the stores, thereby implying the existence of universal human purchase behavior. The rate of sales numbers around these power laws are generally approximated by log-normal distributions implying that there are hidden random parameters, which might proportionally affect the purchase activity.

Keywords: Collective behavior; Power law; POS data; Log-normal distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:390:y:2011:i:3:p:499-504

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2010.09.032

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