Discrete Choice Analysis: Predicting Individual Behavior and Market Demand

SHORT COURSE
by Moshe Ben-Akiva and Michel Bierlaire.
January 26 - 30, 2025
École Polytechnique, Lausanne Switzerland

Accurate predictions of the demand and market shares are critical for a wide variety of businesses and public organizations. Examples of applications include: predicting demand for a new product under alternative pricing strategies; designing a business plan for a new technology; analyzing the impact of a merger on market shares; forecasting the ridership on a new metropolitan transit service; and analyzing competitive scenarios for introducing a new telecommunication service. To accomplish these tasks, discrete choice analysis provides powerful methodological tools. Based on the modeling of individual behavior, it is used to model in detail the structure of a market, and to predict the impact of various scenarios.

This one-week program undertakes an in-depth study of discrete choice models and their applications. It provides participants with the practical tools necessary for applying new discrete choice techniques. By examining actual case studies of discrete choice methods students will be familiarized with problems of data collection, model formulation, testing, and forecasting and will gain hands-on application experience by using readily available software to estimate and test discrete choice models from real databases. The course will emphasize applications of discrete choice methods to strategic and tactical marketing and to policy-related problems.

The course has been designed by Prof. Ben-Akiva who is offering it every summer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is organized in Europe by Prof. Michel Bierlaire, from the Transportation and Mobility Laboratory at EPFL.

More info: Transport and Mobility Laboratory (epfl.ch)