Appropriate Models for Technology Substitution

Abstract

Introduction Scanning the available literature on technology substi­ tution we can see that the influence factors in general are a function of market share. Further, on examining the tech­ nology substitution models, it is clear that they assume a linear trend in the model formulation. On plotting the corresponding variables we notice that in some cases i t does give a l inear trend but in many cases it takes a different shape such as parabolic, exponential, etc. These curves can be described very well by known mathematical equations, which in tum can be obtained by changing the change agents in the mathematical models. In this paper an attempt is made to apply these mathematical equations to describe the available trends, depending on the pattern of the data set. Results so obtained with the help of exponential, double log, parabolic and power equations have been com­ pared with that of Fisher-Pry model I .