16‐741 December 2016 “Models of Consumer Demand for Differentiated Products” Timothy J. Richards and Celine Bonnet Models of Consumer Demand for Di¤erentiated Products Timothy J. Richards and Celine Bonnet September 12, 2016 Abstract Advances in available data, econometric methods, and computing power have cre- ated a revolution in demand modeling over the past two decades. Highly granular data on household choices means that we can model very speci…c decisions regarding pur- chase choices for di¤erentiated products at the retail level. In this chapter, we review the recent methods in modeling consumer demand, and their application to problems in industrial organization and strategic marketing. Keywords: consumer demand, discrete choice, discrete-continuous choice, shopping basket models, machine learning. JEL Codes: D43, L13, L81, M31. Richards is Professor and Morrison Chair of Agribusiness, Morrison School of Agribusiness, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University; Bonnet is Senior Researcher, Toulouse School of Economics and INRA, Toulouse, France. Contact author, Richards: Ph. 480-727-1488, email:
[email protected]. Copyright 2016. Users may copy with permission. 1 Introduction Advances in available data, econometric methods, and computing power have created a rev- olution in demand modeling over the past two decades. Highly granular data on household choices means that we can model very speci…c decisions regarding purchase choices for dif- ferentiated products at the retail level. In this chapter, we review the recent methods in modeling consumer demand that have proven useful for problems in industrial organization and strategic marketing. Analyzing problems in the agricultural and food industries requires demand models that are able to address heterogeneity in consumer choice in di¤erentiated-product markets.