Analysis of the life cycle trend of the export market of Taiwanese bicycle industry

With the Bass Model of the diffusion theory as tools and the export volume and the export price of Taiwanese bicycles as variables, this research calculated the innovation and imitation abilities, as well as the market potential, shown in European, American and Asian markets through optimized adjustment of innovation coefficient (p) and imitation coefficient (q), and further explored the characteristics of the export markets of Taiwanese bicycles. The study found that the unit price of the products not only reflects the consumption characteristics of the markets, but is also positively correlated with the innovation ability. This research used MAPE (mean absolutely percentage error) to measure the model accuracy, and found that the innovation ability in European bicycle market is the highest (0.063) and that in Asia is the lowest (0.011); the imitation ability in American bicycle market is the highest (0.22) and that in Asia is the lowest (0.16); the market potential (m) in American bicycle market is the highest and that in Asia is the lowest. The predicted MAPE of Europe, America and Asia were 21.26%, 18.00% and 15.65%, respectively, showing good predictive ability, and proving that besides product life cycle prediction, Bass Model can also predict the trend of the unit price and the sales volume and reflect the market characteristics of the products through the value of p and q. This research can not only provide decision-makers reference for prediction of product life cycle trend, but also offer assistance to future studies using Bass Model to predict the sales volume.