A study on the demand forecast of wireless data communication service

Abstract

Portable Internet service, which has the intermediate characteristic of both WLAN and 3G, may become an alternative in the next generation communications. Because these three services have similar purpose and function in the future, PI service will compete with WLAN and 3G in the near future. Therefore, it is necessary to prospect the demand diffusion pattern of PI service and its correlation with WLAN and 3G. Many studies have been done to forecast the demand of previous telecommunication services by using the Bass diffusion model. The incorporation of external variable into diffusion model is required in order to consider market status and to improve marketing strategies for new service. Thus, it is necessary to develop the extended diffusion model to consider the competition with the similar services. In this study, we develop the modified Bass model to consider competition and to apply the demand forecasting for PI service with competition among these three WDC services. The purposes of this paper are as follows: first, to analyze the WDC services and to illustrate the WDC services situation in domestic market; second, to develop the new demand forecasting approach with the competitive relation of WDC services; third, to estimate the demand forecasting of PI service with the competitive relation. This study follows 4 steps to establish the modified Bass model and to estimate the demand forecasting for PI service. The first step is to estimate the demand forecasting for PI service with traditional Bass model. The second step is to analyze the consumer preference by using the conjoint analysis. The third step is to estimate the competitive coefficient from logit choice rule. The forth step is to estimate the demand forecasting with the modified diffusion model, which is considered a competitive relation between PI service and timely advanced services (3G, WLAN). The framework of this model combines the traditional Bass model and conjoint analysis in v...