Inferring latent brand dependencies

In this article, the authors develop a class of models to reconstruct brand-transition probabilities when individual brand purchase sequence information is not available. The authors introduce two general model forms by assuming different underlying mechanisms for individual heterogeneity in brand switching. The first model form captures individual heterogeneity by a latent class structure. The second model form captures individual heterogeneity by postulating that the brand-choice probabilities follow a Dirichlet distribution, which yields the popular Dirichlet multinomial formulation. Monte Carlo simulations are performed with a view toward assessing whether individual transition probabilities can be captured from knowledge of only aggregated brand choices. Results indicate that the proposed method can indeed capture individual brand-transition probabilities under several different conditions. An empirical application illustrates how these models can be used to provide important information on individual brand transitions and the role of marketing-related covariates.