The weekly box office revenues (in $ millions) for the summer blockbuster movie discussed in Section 10.5 follow. Use these data in the Bass forecasting model given by equations (10.19)–(10.21) to estimate the parameters p, q, and m.
Week Revenues
1………………………. 72.39
2………………………. 37.93
3………………………. 17.58
4………………………. 9.57
5………………………. 5.39
6………………………. 3.13
7………………………. 1.62
8………………………. 0.87
9………………………. 0.61
10………………………. 0.26
11………………………. 0.19
12………………………. 0.35
The Bass forecasting model is a good example of a difficult-to-solve nonlinear program, and the answer you get may be a local optimum that is not nearly as good as the result given in Table 10.4. Solve the model using Excel Solver with the Multistart option, and see whether you can duplicate the results in Table 10.4.