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Public Mood and Consumption Choices: Evidence from Sales of Sony Cameras on Taobao

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  • Qingguo Ma
  • Wuke Zhang

Abstract

Previous researchers have tried to predict social and economic phenomena with indicators of public mood, which were extracted from online data. This method has been proved to be feasible in many areas such as financial markets, economic operations and even national suicide numbers. However, few previous researches have examined the relationship between public mood and consumption choices at society level. The present study paid attention to the “Diaoyu Island” event, and extracted Chinese public mood data toward Japan from Sina MicroBlog (the biggest social media in China), which demonstrated a significant cross-correlation between the public mood variable and sales of Sony cameras on Taobao (the biggest Chinese e-business company). Afterwards, several candidate predictors of sales were examined and finally three significant stepwise regression models were obtained. Results of models estimation showed that significance (F-statistics), R-square and predictive accuracy (MAPE) all improved due to inclusion of public mood variable. These results indicate that public mood is significantly associated with consumption choices and may be of value in sales forecasting for particular products.

Suggested Citation

  • Qingguo Ma & Wuke Zhang, 2015. "Public Mood and Consumption Choices: Evidence from Sales of Sony Cameras on Taobao," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-11, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0123129
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0123129
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Hong-Hee Won & Woojae Myung & Gil-Young Song & Won-Hee Lee & Jong-Won Kim & Bernard J Carroll & Doh Kwan Kim, 2013. "Predicting National Suicide Numbers with Social Media Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-6, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Eric W. K. See-To & Eric W. T. Ngai, 2018. "Customer reviews for demand distribution and sales nowcasting: a big data approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 270(1), pages 415-431, November.
    2. Gaku Fukunaga & Hideki Takayasu & Misako Takayasu, 2016. "Property of Fluctuations of Sales Quantities by Product Category in Convenience Stores," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-19, June.

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