by "DanimalHouse" (thrillerwa09)
Published 05/10/2017 at 12:31
by "DanimalHouse" (thrillerwa09)
Published 05/10/2017 at 12:31
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For a business class I’m taking, my project team is tasked with gathering data from the last x-many years in order to run a regression analysis to predict future car sales at a national level.
The data must be independent data sources, such as...
Gas Prices
Stock market performance
Consumer Confidence Levels
GDP
etc.
We must correlate several of these data sources together to closely match historical car sales in order to predict sales in the future.
Anybody have any ideas on what kind of data might be worth exploring?????
Classic F1 car sounds for your time!
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"Azrek" (azrek)
05/10/2017 at 12:44, STARS: 0
“If I asked my customers what they wanted they would’ve said, “A faster horse”
Henry Ford
"Future next gen S2000 owner" (future-next-gen-s2000-owner)
05/10/2017 at 12:55, STARS: 0
Inflation rates.
Employment rates, not to be confused with unemployment rates.
Any consistent survey about future outlook on the economy.
First time home buyer rates - I’ll bet this one is real interesting.
Think anything that makes a person feel comfortable in their immediate employment opportunities.
Don’t forget about lead and lag analysis. I’ll bet that is where the correlation will be.
"RutRut" (RDR)
05/10/2017 at 13:00, STARS: 1
Graduation rates, average income, obviously oil prices, number of people enlisting, population growth in urban areas.
"TorqueToYield" (torquetoyield)
05/10/2017 at 13:16, STARS: 2
You could try birth rate. I know lots of people, including myself, bought a (newer, safer, bigger) car when I found out my wife was pregnant.
"DanimalHouse" (thrillerwa09)
05/10/2017 at 13:24, STARS: 0
First time home buy rates
GREAT idea, I like this a lot.
"DanimalHouse" (thrillerwa09)
05/10/2017 at 13:26, STARS: 0
Yep! That was definitely one of the metrics we targeted. We’re pregnant with our first kid right now, and we’re on the hunt to replace my wife’s car - a ‘00 ML320. Can’t stand the thing, and it’s a money pit.
"Tim (Fractal Footwork)" (fractalfootwork)
05/10/2017 at 14:25, STARS: 0
Not really answering your question, but here’s an Econ paper I wrote a few years ago wherein I ran a regression analysis to find out whether halo cars affected consumer purchase decisions: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/do-halo-cars-change-consumer-behavior-enough-to-justify-1572174281
"PotbellyJoe and 42 others" (potbellyjoe)
05/10/2017 at 15:35, STARS: 0
Underwear sales.
I’m not kidding. If you’re not buying new underwear, you won’t be buying a new car.
"Sweet Trav" (thespunbearing)
05/10/2017 at 15:48, STARS: 0
Not independent of cars, but Miles Driven (people get weary of their old cars) and age of US vehicle fleet are good indicators as well. You could also look at average consumer credit score, as well as average auto loan term.
"BLCKSTRM" (BLCKSTRM)
05/10/2017 at 16:31, STARS: 0
Gas prices are far more likely to simply shift mix, with a much weaker affect on overall sales - but you can look at it. And I’d look for the actual gasoline price rather than the price of oil - the EIA has both, so don’t overcomplicate it with using oil instead of gasoline. There was a lot more going on in 2008 than just high gas prices, so your model will need to account for at least some of those drivers.
Also, as some of the front page articles have recently started mentioning, credit is important to sales and sellers digging deeper into the bad credit realms is a sign they’re artificially buoying sales. Average credit scores for car buyers, default rates, loan rates, etc, as well as the lease versions of those metrics, are likely to have a good impact as well since most new car buyers finance or lease. Find some of those articles, see what they mention, and see how those numbers correlate to inflection points historically.
You may also want to look at the car parc and average vehicle age and how that’s changed over time. There may be some kind of rhythm to the way average age changes over time, which could have some predictive power when leveraged with car parc.
The other indicators others have mentioned are also great suggestions (wages, inflation, unemployment, home sales, buyer sentiment, economic outlook, GDP, etc).