This course covers some key topics at the research frontier in quantitative marketing. We formulate and estimate models of consumer decision-making, and then explore the normative and positive consequences of the inferred consumer behavior for optimal marketing decisions and market structure. Topics include: Foundations of demand modeling, measurement of consumer heterogeneity, the origin and evolution of preferences, state dependence in demand, dynamic discrete choice models, learning and memory models, storable goods demand, diffusion models and durable goods demand, stated choice models, advertising dynamics, and search and shopping behavior.
This course is geared towards 2nd-year Ph.D. students who have already taken at least one course in Ph.D.-level Price Theory and in Ph.D.-level Empirical Economics.