Patent ID: 7246079

Claim:
A method of predicting an initial input of a new product for predicting a sales volume or market share at the launch of a new product, comprising: numerically evaluating a plurality of past products and said new product, with respect to a plurality of factors which are considered to influence a sales volume or market share, by more than one people; and calculating a sales volume or market share of said new product for each one of said people based on numerical values on said past products and said new products given by each one of said people with respect to said factors and actual sales volumes or actual market shares of said past products, and obtaining said factors contributing to the calculation and the magnitude of said factors, via a structured neural network, wherein comprehensive evaluations on said past products and said new products for each one of said people are calculated based on the numerical values with respect to said factors, correlation coefficients are calculated between the comprehensive evaluations on said past products by each one of said people and the actual sales volumes or actual market shares of said past products, the sales volumes or market shares of said new product calculated for said more than one people by said structured neural network are layered out based on the correlation coefficients for said more than one people, average values and confidence intervals of the sales volumes or market shares of said new product in the respective layers are calculated, and a sales volume or market share of said new product is predicted based on the average values and the confidence intervals for the respective layers, the sales volumes or market shares calculated for said more than one people by said structured neural network, and said factors contributing to the calculation and the magnitude of said factors.