An Adaptive Framework for Forecasting Demand and Technological Substitution

This paper proposes a new model as a framework for forecasting demand and technological substitution, which can accommodate different patterns of technological change. This model, which we named, "Adaptive Diffusion Model", is formalized from a conceptual framework that incorporates several underlying factors determining the market demand for technological products. The formulation of this model is given in terms of a period analysis to improve its explanatory power for dynamic processes in the real world, and is described as a continuous form which approximates a discrete derivation of the model. In order to illustrate the applicability and generality of this model, time-series data of the diffusion rates for some typical products in electronics and telecommunications market have been empirically tested. The results show that the model has higher explanatory power than any other existing model for all the products tested in our study. It has been found that this model can provide a framework which is sufficiently robust in forecasting demand and innovation diffusion for various technological products.