Predictive competitive intelligence with prerelease online search traffic
研究利用竞争对手新产品的发布前在线搜索流量（PROST）来预测其销售表现，发现相比仅用内部数据，该方法可将预测准确率提升18%以上，对营销组合管理和新品发布规划有实用价值。
In today's competitive market environment, it is vital for companies to gain insight about competitors' new product launches. Past studies have demonstrated the predictive value of prerelease online search traffic (PROST) for new product forecasting. Relying on these findings and the public availability of PROST, we investigate its usefulness for estimating sales of competing products. We propose a model for predicting the success of competitors' product launches, based on own past product sales data and competitor's prerelease Google Trends. We find that PROST increases predictive accuracy by more than 18% compared to models that only use internally available sales data and product characteristics of video game sales. We conclude that this inexpensive source of competitive intelligence can be helpful when managing the marketing mix and planning new product releases.