DETERMINANTS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: TRENDS AND DEMAND SEASONALITY

The article is devoted to forecasting demand based on the study of consumer behavior and the factors that determine this behavior. Identifying trends and assessing the impact of seasonality on demand generation is the first challenge in describing typical consumer choice behavior. The consumption effect describes how Habitual buying behaviour is Identifying trends and the seasonality of demand. The solution to the current task was to a retrospective analysis of retail sales. Such issues how the assessment of seasonality, the identification of a general trend, the interdependence of sales of alternative fuels have been researched under this article. The trends noted to decrease in the volume of fuel consumption, differences in the structure of retail turnover, and the total demand for motor fuel should be viewed as behavioral changes in the end-users. While gasoline and gas are mainly sold through the filling stations, the share of diesel fuel sales through filling stations is less than a fifth of the total sales. Structural changes in the retail fuel implication are that the fuel market is being replaced by cheaper substitutes — gas. In this article, we consider that the analysis of seasonality is the initial stage of forecasting the dynamics of demand. Seasonality was estimated for each fuel and for the group of motor fuels as a whole, for retail sales and total fuel consumption. The results of the analysis showed that gasoline and gas sales are moderate seasonality. Diesel fuel is characterized by the greatest amplitude of seasonal fluctuations. The seasonal activity the consuming-industries of diesel fuel explains the dynamics of demand, which is typical for secondary demand goods. Studying seasonality to determine its effect on demand includes: applying a multiplicative seasonality model for analyzing time series of demand and building a model for time series components; calculation of seasonality indices based on the average annual consumption level for prepare data and forecasting dynamics; comparison of peaks of seasonality and the amplitude of non-seasonal demand fluctuations to assess the impact of market factors. The study did not confirm that the seasonality of fuel consumption determines the seasonality of prices; no correlation was found between price fluctuations and the seasonality factor.