Research On Repeatable Purchase Of Multiple Generation Product Innovation Diffusion Model Based On Ant Colony Optimization

With the rapid develop process of globalization, Companies which in order to maintain their market advantage constantly produce newer generation of products on the basis of the previous generation. Although the performance has improved, the product could not replace the former generation completely when it appeared in the market. They can only compete with the former generation. So the phenomenon of coexistence of multiple generations appeared in the market. Time interval of the replacement is shorter at the same time. The dependence between the generations is growing stronger and stronger. Therefore, we should research more on this dynamic process of multi-generation, which could help companies grasp the trend of diffusion of multi-generation. Enterprises can make the appropriate marketing strategies to guide market operation on the basis of the research. Repeat purchase is one of important factor in multi-generation product diffusion. When the new generation enter the market at the first time, the product sales mainly rely on the consumer's tentative first-time buyers. As time goes on, more and more new product sales depend on consumers repetitive purchases. Especially diffusion in later period of multiple generation high-tech products, repeat purchase factors significantly affected the amount of product proliferation. We consider the factors of the repurchase on the basis of multiple generation innovation product diffusion models. The new model could reflect real market accurately and improve the prediction accuracy of multiple generation innovation products. As the different impact between tentative purchase and repetitive purchase, we should distinguish between two different types of purchase which is more meaningful to company.At present, the multi-generation innovative products diffusion model can basically describe diffusion characteristics of multiple generations in the market. But the model assumes that buyers for the first time buyers, and does not consider the factors of repeat purchase. There are some researches about innovation diffusion considering repeat buying factors. For example, some studies used frequent-purchased model in everyday items or low-value consumable product. Some other researchers use the life cycle model of repurchased product in some diffusion of durable goods. Most of these researches are on the basis of single generation products diffusion, and not apply to multi-generation high-tech product innovation diffusion. But there is less research on repeatable purchase of multiple generation product innovation diffusion, and the empirical study used in China's market is very little.In this paper, we try to relax assumption on the basis of Norton-Bass model which is the basic multi-generation innovative products diffusion model. we divide buyers into first-time buyers and repeat buyers, and consider the jump phenomenon of diffusion process. We give a multi-generation innovation product diffusion model when we take into account the repeat purchase. Considering the complexity of the model, the paper adopts a new parameter estimation method that named ant colony optimization for innovative product diffusion model. The model take the modes of connecting with internet in China as an example and conduct empirical test. We get the result that comparing with Norton-Bass model the model have better goodness of fit and more accurate forecasts. We compare estimation results among ant colony optimization, maximum likelihood estimation and nonlinear least squares method at the same time. We found that using ant colony optimization will have better prediction effect with less historical data. Finally, the paper on the basis of repeatable purchase of multiple generation innovation product diffusion model uses ant colony optimization in the modes of connecting with internet in China to predict the tendency of spread.