Creating Insights in Large Markets

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernd Skiera
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 320164776

While markets of past decades consisted of relatively few firms and products, markets of the 21st century are much larger (e.g. thousands of products). What has not changed is the need of firms to understand the competitive environment in which they operate in order to make strategic and tactical decisions. However, such understanding requires the collection and analysis of large amounts of data (big data), which is not possible using traditional data sources (e.g. surveys) or methods. The aim of the project is therefore to create insights into large markets. We plan to develop new methods specifically designed to process big data and apply these methods in empirical studies to data containing searches and transactions of more than 100,000 of consumers. The scope of analysis encompasses firms, products and consumers. To create insights for each of these three, we proceed in 6 individual project modules aligned accordingly. The project profits from both preparatory work as well as initial data sets that were already collected.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants