Method for estimating purchases made by customers

A method, performed on a computer, to estimate purchases made by preferred customers at competitive suppliers, comprising:

• retrieving panelist data associated with customer purchases and customer data associated with purchases by preferred customers at a supplier of interest;
• comparing a value of the customer data with a threshold value of purchasing behavior to identify inconsistent data;
• removing the identified inconsistent data from the retrieved customer data;
• generating a customer purchase scoring matrix by performing an unrotated principal components factor analysis on the customer data from which the inconsistent data has been removed;
• generating a panelist set of factors and a customer set of factors based on scoring the panelist data and the customer data, respectively;
• creating predictor variables based on the panelist set of factors and the customer set of factors;
• generating, on a processor of the computer, a relationship between panelist purchases at the supplier of interest and panelist purchases at competitive suppliers, the relationship based on a linear regression of a number of panelists associated with the predictor variables;
• and
• estimating purchases made by the preferred customers at the competitive suppliers by applying the relationship to the customer data.