Research output: Working paper
Research output: Working paper
}
TY - UNPB
T1 - Estimating the market potential with pre-release buzz
AU - Schaer, Oliver
AU - Kourentzes, Nikolaos
AU - Fildes, Robert Alan
PY - 2019/2/3
Y1 - 2019/2/3
N2 - With increased competition and shorter product life-cycles, forecasting the life-cycle sales of new products prior to launch is becoming increasingly important to marketers and demand planners. Our study contributes to the literature on new product adoption using analogies by augmenting information from previous generations with pre-release search traffic. In contrast to existing research, which relies on pre-release buzz information only for the launch phase, we consider life-cycle sales. First, we propose a model of pre-release buzz and market potential, establishing the connection between the two. Then, we validate this relationship with an empirical experiment on sequential video game sales. Our finding support that pre-release buzz contains predictive information up to 17 weeks prior to release and can increase life-cycle sales forecast accuracy up to 20%. The explanatory power of pre-release buzz varies across product generations. This evolution opens up marketing opportunities and highlights why it is important to manage pre-release buzz.
AB - With increased competition and shorter product life-cycles, forecasting the life-cycle sales of new products prior to launch is becoming increasingly important to marketers and demand planners. Our study contributes to the literature on new product adoption using analogies by augmenting information from previous generations with pre-release search traffic. In contrast to existing research, which relies on pre-release buzz information only for the launch phase, we consider life-cycle sales. First, we propose a model of pre-release buzz and market potential, establishing the connection between the two. Then, we validate this relationship with an empirical experiment on sequential video game sales. Our finding support that pre-release buzz contains predictive information up to 17 weeks prior to release and can increase life-cycle sales forecast accuracy up to 20%. The explanatory power of pre-release buzz varies across product generations. This evolution opens up marketing opportunities and highlights why it is important to manage pre-release buzz.
KW - Google Trends
KW - diffusion
KW - pre-launch
KW - analogy
KW - new product
M3 - Working paper
SP - 1
EP - 39
BT - Estimating the market potential with pre-release buzz
PB - Department of Management Science, Lancaster University
ER -