IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jftint/v11y2018i1p5-d192870.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forecasting E-Commerce Products Prices by Combining an Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) Model and Google Trends Data

Author

Listed:
  • Salvatore Carta

    (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Palazzo delle Scienze, Via Ospedale 72, 09124 Cagliari, Italy)

  • Andrea Medda

    (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Palazzo delle Scienze, Via Ospedale 72, 09124 Cagliari, Italy)

  • Alessio Pili

    (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Palazzo delle Scienze, Via Ospedale 72, 09124 Cagliari, Italy)

  • Diego Reforgiato Recupero

    (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Palazzo delle Scienze, Via Ospedale 72, 09124 Cagliari, Italy)

  • Roberto Saia

    (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Palazzo delle Scienze, Via Ospedale 72, 09124 Cagliari, Italy)

Abstract

E-commerce is becoming more and more the main instrument for selling goods to the mass market. This led to a growing interest in algorithms and techniques able to predict products future prices, since they allow us to define smart systems able to improve the quality of life by suggesting more affordable goods and services. The joint use of time series, reputation and sentiment analysis clearly represents one important approach to this research issue. In this paper we present Price Probe, a suite of software tools developed to perform forecasting on products’ prices. Its primary aim is to predict the future price trend of products generating a customized forecast through the exploitation of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. We experimented the effectiveness of the proposed approach on one of the biggest E-commerce infrastructure in the world: Amazon. We used specific APIs and dedicated crawlers to extract and collect information about products and their related prices over time and, moreover, we extracted information from social media and Google Trends that we used as exogenous features for the ARIMA model. We fine-estimated ARIMA’s parameters and tried the different combinations of the exogenous features and noticed through experimental analysis that the presence of Google Trends information significantly improved the predictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Salvatore Carta & Andrea Medda & Alessio Pili & Diego Reforgiato Recupero & Roberto Saia, 2018. "Forecasting E-Commerce Products Prices by Combining an Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) Model and Google Trends Data," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-19, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:11:y:2018:i:1:p:5-:d:192870
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/11/1/5/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/11/1/5/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Suat Ozturk & Feride Ozturk, 2018. "Forecasting Energy Consumption of Turkey by Arima Model," Journal of Asian Scientific Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 8(2), pages 52-60.
    2. G. E. P. Box & G. M. Jenkins & J. F. MacGregor, 1974. "Some Recent Advances in Forecasting and Control," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 23(2), pages 158-179, June.
    3. Meyler, Aidan & Kenny, Geoff & Quinn, Terry, 1998. "Forecasting irish inflation using ARIMA models," MPRA Paper 11359, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Guo, Kun & Sun, Yi & Qian, Xin, 2017. "Can investor sentiment be used to predict the stock price? Dynamic analysis based on China stock market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 469(C), pages 390-396.
    5. Khobai, Hlalefang & Chitauro, Mishaelight, 2018. "The Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Economic Growth in Switzerland," MPRA Paper 89884, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Yang, Wendong & Wang, Jianzhou & Niu, Tong & Du, Pei, 2019. "A hybrid forecasting system based on a dual decomposition strategy and multi-objective optimization for electricity price forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 1205-1225.
    7. Hong, Tao & Fan, Shu, 2016. "Probabilistic electric load forecasting: A tutorial review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 914-938.
    8. Pincheira, Pablo & Hardy, Nicolas, 2018. "Forecasting Base Metal Prices with Commodity Currencies," MPRA Paper 83564, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Paulo B. Goes & Mingfeng Lin & Ching-man Au Yeung, 2014. "“Popularity Effect” in User-Generated Content: Evidence from Online Product Reviews," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 25(2), pages 222-238, June.
    10. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    11. Dickey, David A & Fuller, Wayne A, 1981. "Likelihood Ratio Statistics for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1057-1072, June.
    12. Lopes, Sílvia Regina Costa & Olbermann, Bárbara Patrícia & Reisen, Valderio Anselmo, 2002. "Non-stationary Gaussian ARFIMA processes: Estimation and application," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 22(1), May.
    13. Christopher Bennett & Rodney A. Stewart & Junwei Lu, 2014. "Autoregressive with Exogenous Variables and Neural Network Short-Term Load Forecast Models for Residential Low Voltage Distribution Networks," Energies, MDPI, vol. 7(5), pages 1-23, April.
    14. Francis X. Diebold, 2015. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy, Twenty Years Later: A Personal Perspective on the Use and Abuse of Diebold-Mariano Tests," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1), pages 1-1, January.
    15. Pai, Ping-Feng & Lin, Chih-Sheng, 2005. "A hybrid ARIMA and support vector machines model in stock price forecasting," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 497-505, December.
    16. Khim-Yong Goh & Cheng-Suang Heng & Zhijie Lin, 2013. "Social Media Brand Community and Consumer Behavior: Quantifying the Relative Impact of User- and Marketer-Generated Content," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 88-107, March.
    17. Kuo-Kun Tseng & Regina Fang-Ying Lin & Hongfu Zhou & Kevin Jati Kurniajaya & Qianyu Li, 2018. "Price prediction of e-commerce products through Internet sentiment analysis," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 65-88, March.
    18. Serena Ng & Pierre Perron, 2001. "LAG Length Selection and the Construction of Unit Root Tests with Good Size and Power," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1519-1554, November.
    19. Bangwayo-Skeete, Prosper F. & Skeete, Ryan W., 2015. "Can Google data improve the forecasting performance of tourist arrivals? Mixed-data sampling approach," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 454-464.
    20. Steffen Zimmermann & Philipp Herrmann & Dennis Kundisch & Barrie R. Nault, 2018. "Decomposing the Variance of Consumer Ratings and the Impact on Price and Demand," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(4), pages 984-1002, December.
    21. Chris Hand & Guy Judge, 2012. "Searching for the picture: forecasting UK cinema admissions using Google Trends data," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(11), pages 1051-1055, July.
    22. Armstrong, J. Scott & Collopy, Fred, 1992. "Error measures for generalizing about forecasting methods: Empirical comparisons," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 69-80, June.
    23. Suat Ozturk & Feride Ozturk, 2018. "Forecasting Energy Consumption of Turkey by Arima Model," Journal of Asian Scientific Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 8(2), pages 52-60, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chuen Yik Kang & Chin Poo Lee & Kian Ming Lim, 2022. "Cryptocurrency Price Prediction with Convolutional Neural Network and Stacked Gated Recurrent Unit," Data, MDPI, vol. 7(11), pages 1-13, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ulrich Gunter & Irem Önder & Stefan Gindl, 2019. "Exploring the predictive ability of LIKES of posts on the Facebook pages of four major city DMOs in Austria," Tourism Economics, , vol. 25(3), pages 375-401, May.
    2. Schaer, Oliver & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Fildes, Robert, 2019. "Demand forecasting with user-generated online information," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 197-212.
    3. Monika Zielińska-Sitkiewicz & Mariola Chrzanowska & Konrad Furmańczyk & Kacper Paczutkowski, 2021. "Analysis of Electricity Consumption in Poland Using Prediction Models and Neural Networks," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-21, October.
    4. Bruno Ferman & Cristine Pinto, 2021. "Synthetic controls with imperfect pretreatment fit," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(4), pages 1197-1221, November.
    5. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    6. Palanisamy Manigandan & MD Shabbir Alam & Majed Alharthi & Uzma Khan & Kuppusamy Alagirisamy & Duraisamy Pachiyappan & Abdul Rehman, 2021. "Forecasting Natural Gas Production and Consumption in United States-Evidence from SARIMA and SARIMAX Models," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-17, September.
    7. Gavin Boyd & Dain Na & Zhong Li & Spencer Snowling & Qianqian Zhang & Pengxiao Zhou, 2019. "Influent Forecasting for Wastewater Treatment Plants in North America," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-14, March.
    8. Pruethsan Sutthichaimethee & Danupon Ariyasajjakorn, 2018. "Relationships between Causal Factors Affecting Future Carbon Dioxide Output from Thailand’s Transportation Sector under the Government’s Sustainability Policy: Expanding the SEM-VECM Model," Resources, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-18, December.
    9. Swasti R. Khuntia & Jose L. Rueda & Mart A.M.M. Van der Meijden, 2018. "Long-Term Electricity Load Forecasting Considering Volatility Using Multiplicative Error Model," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-19, November.
    10. Boone, Tonya & Ganeshan, Ram & Jain, Aditya & Sanders, Nada R., 2019. "Forecasting sales in the supply chain: Consumer analytics in the big data era," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 170-180.
    11. Hauser, Shmuel & Kedar-Levy, Haim & Milo, Orit, 2022. "Price discovery during parallel stocks and options preopening: Information distortion and hints of manipulation," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 59(PA).
    12. Vasudeva N. R. Murthy & Emmanuel Anoruo, 2009. "Are Per Capita Real GDP Series in African Countries Non-stationary or Non-linear? What does Empirical Evidence Reveal?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(4), pages 2492-2504.
    13. Isabel Cortés-Jiménez & Manuel Artís, 2005. "The role of the tourism sector in economic development - Lessons from the Spanish experience," ERSA conference papers ersa05p488, European Regional Science Association.
    14. Derek Bond & Michael J. Harrison & Edward J. O'Brien, 2005. "Testing for Long Memory and Nonlinear Time Series: A Demand for Money Study," Trinity Economics Papers tep20021, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    15. Sohail Abbas & Shazia Kousar & Amber Pervaiz, 2021. "Effects of energy consumption and ecological footprint on CO2 emissions: an empirical evidence from Pakistan," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(9), pages 13364-13381, September.
    16. Geri Skenderi & Christian Joppi & Matteo Denitto & Marco Cristani, 2024. "Well googled is half done: Multimodal forecasting of new fashion product sales with image‐based google trends," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(6), pages 1982-1997, September.
    17. Boubaker Heni & Canarella Giorgio & Gupta Rangan & Miller Stephen M., 2017. "Time-varying persistence of inflation: evidence from a wavelet-based approach," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(4), pages 1-18, September.
    18. Claude Diebolt & Cédric Doliger, 2005. "Becker vs. Easterlin. Education, Fertility and Growth in France after World War II," Working Papers 05-03, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC).
    19. Johannes W. Fedderke, 2022. "Identifying steady‐state growth and inflation in the South African economy, 1960–2020," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 90(3), pages 279-300, September.
    20. Singh, Tarlok, 2014. "On the regime-switching and asymmetric dynamics of economic growth in the OECD countries," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 169-192.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:11:y:2018:i:1:p:5-:d:192870. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.