The long-term challenge Consumer products such as shampoo or
tomato sauce are designed so that they appeal to consumers,
encouraging them to buy those products. To that end, the
industrial R&D organisation tends to focus on understanding and
manipulating product attributes. However, buying behaviour is
not only a function of the product: it is also, and in some
cases perhaps more so, a function of the consumer, his/her
social environment of other consumers, the competing products in
the marketplace, and the brand marketing strategy. In order to
design the best product, it is necessary to understand not just
the physics and chemistry of the product, but also the
psychology of consumers and the sociology of consumer groups or
networks. The goal of this study is to have a model of the
marketplace that describes certain aspects of consumer buying
behaviour. There are two main parts to such a model: - A
description of a population of consumers, who each choose (buy)
repeatedly one of a number of competing brands (