Fashion Wave Model

Implemented by Marco Valente (rev. ESA)

Many, if not most, of the decisions of consumers in industrialised countries are motivated by fashion. A very important aspect of many consumption purchases are determined by the fashion, that is, how people "interpret" a person by means of their clothes, car, tie, mobile phone, etc.

A group of economists worked on the analysis of this behaviour. We are going to build a model considering two types of consumers:

- Type 0: the rich consumers. They aim at getting as similar as possible to the fellow type 0 consumers and as different as possible to the type 1 consumers.
- Type 1: the poor consumers. They simply want to get as similar as possible to the majority of type 0 consumers.

We assume that there are two types of product, as usual, 0 and 1. Let’s consider that in a population we have:

- NRich: the number of rich consumers (=100)
- NRich0: the number of rich consumers currently owning product 0
- NRich1: the number of rich consumers currently owning product 1
- NPoor: the number of poor consumers (=100)
- NPoor0: the number of poor consumers currently owning product 0;
- NPoor1: the number of poor consumers currently owning product 1;

Further population level items:
- ProbAction (param): the probability that the product choice is reconsidered
- Share0: the share of product 0
- Share1: the share of product 1

Characteristics of agents:
- Type (param): 0 if rich, 1 if poor.
- Status (variable): type of product currently used (either 0 or 1)