The ISMS Durable Goods Datasets

Abstract

This paper describes two new datasets available to academic researchers. The first is a panel dataset containing the transactions of 19,936 households made over the period from December 1998 to November 2004 at a major U.S. consumer electronics retailer. There are a total of 173,262 transactions, including purchases and returns of products as well as extended warranties. There are 16 product categories and 292 sub-categories, ranging from big ticket items such as televisions to small ticket items such as CDs and batteries. The second dataset features a field experiment for a Christmas promotion that took place in December 2003 in the form of a direct mailing sent to a randomly selected group of households at the end of November 2003. We describe the data and the research issues that can be potentially studied using these two durable goods datasets.