THE USE OF MARKOV CHAINS TO DETERMINE THE CAPACITY OF MARKET SEGMENTS IN A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE BEHAVIOR OF GENERATIONS OF CONSUMERS

Abstract

The problem of improving the methods of consumer research and the development of fundamentally new current and future forecasts of high-quality demand, taking into account consumer behavior and effective management in the conditions of the digital transformation of society, is urgent and completely unsolved. Analysis of mathematical models of forecasting demand and market capacity showed that the models are usually based on identifying common and stable patterns and relationships, analyzing trends and their extrapolation. The development of economic and mathematical models, taking into account the factors of the turbulent environment of the behavior of different generations of consumers, requires an appropriate mathematical apparatus, mechanisms for collecting statistical data and building appropriate models. Particular attention should be paid to the prediction of consumer behavior of the so-called "Generation Z", which is formed under the influence of the intensive development of digital technologies and has a number of features. In conditions when the majority of goods on the modern market are represented by several manufacturers, a large number of brands, and sales promotion by producers and sellers is abrupt, and the reaction of buyers to a particular product depends on many factors, the forecast of sales volumes can be based on a statistical assessment of changes in consumer preferences for products of individual species and manufacturers. The heuristic methods for predicting the market share of goods include a consumer assessment method using the Markov chain, which is based on the calculation of the transition matrix, whose elements are the probabilities of transition of predicted parameters from one state to another, from one brand to another. Economic-mathematical modeling of the capacity of market segments using Markov chains uses simple calculations, is easy to use, has the ability to track trends and causes of changes in the study of the dynamics of demand in different market segments.