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The use of growth functions for estimating developments in consumer demand is already rather old. In many books on 'mathematics for economists' one can find one or more examples of growth functions, however, usually without any economic considerations as a background. Furthermore there are many econometric contributions on the subject scattered over many books and journals. In this book - the English translation of the author's doctoral thesis - , Dr. W.J. Oomens gives a highly unified treatment of the subject. The book consists of two main parts, preceded by an introduction and concluded by an application. The first main part starts with a discussion of the general notions underlying the theory of the development of demand for new consumer durable goods and next describes the many models known from the literature, using these general notions. Because of the unified treatment the author succeeds in clearly ranking the different models, in presenting the aspects they have in cornmon and in explaining the properties which are different in the models being described. The critical discussion of the existing models leads a.o. to a new model, the 'heterogeneous generalized logistic model', in which environmental variables are inserted into the purchase propensity function as well as into the function for the variable saturation degree.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 1.1. Definition and limitation of the concept 'consumer durable'.- 1.2. The total market of a consumer durable.- 1.3. Initial and replacement demand for a consumer durable.- 2. The Initial Demand for Consumer Durables.- 2.1. Introduction.- 2.2. General characteristics of purchase behaviour models.- 2.3. The growth process of the ownership of a consumer durable, environment factors constant.- 2.4. The growth process of the ownership of a consumer durable environment factors variable.- 3. Replacement Demand for Consumer Durables.- 3.1. Introduction.- 3.2. Determination of replacement demand using survival fractions.- 3.3. Determination of replacement demand on basis of stock and purchase series.- 3.4. Final conclusions.- 4. The Demand for Television Sets in the United States.- 4.1. The data.- 4.2. Initial demand for television sets in the U.S..- 4.3. Replacement demand for television sets in the U.S..- 4.4. Forecast of the demand for television sets in the U.S., 1971-75.- Appendix A Calculation example of the relation between F(t), f(t) and K(t).- Appendix B Calculation of the relation between variable saturation degree and average spendable family income.- Appendix C The gamma-scrappage program applied to replacement demand for television sets in West Germany.- References.
