An agent-based modeling and simulation of consumers’ purchase behavior for wine consumption

Abstract

Emerging Chinese wine market has expanded rapidly in recent years. This paper aims to explore an agent-based modeling method to simulate consumers’ purchase behavior in wine market, China. An agent-based simulation model was built which combined motivation function with decoy effect to simulate consumers’ wine purchase behavior. A survey of 976 valid samples was carried out in China, which meant to estimate key parameters in the simulation model. Then, the experiment was conducted to simulate the decoy effect in China’s wine market. An obvious decoy effect was observed, and the agents who changed purchase choices showed similar motivations toward wine brand A and B. The simulation experiment also recognized attribute intervals for creating an effective decoy. The agent-based modeling can simulate consumers’ purchase behavior in different wine markets through adjusting the parameters in simulation model. The experiment shows decoy effect is highly obvious in Chinese wine market. The findings provide valuable insights into Chinese wine consumer behavior and important implications for wine marketers. It is expected that the modeling methods can be served as a model to simulate consumers’ purchase behavior elsewhere in China. It is the first attempt to apply agent-based model and computing simulation parameters to simulate consumers’ purchase behavior in wine market in China.