Uniqueness Seeking and Demand Estimation in the German Automobile Industry

This paper empirically tackles a behavioral aspect of consumer choices as a determinant of demand in the German automobile industry. Our primary goal is to refine the existing literature on demand estimation by exploring the impact of uniqueness seeking behavior of individuals. Using a dataset on the segment of compact cars in the German market, we show that consumers have an intrinsic need for uniqueness seeking, and the degree a product satisfies this need can be considered as an additional product characteristic. Finally, we can derive implication for firms’ differentiation strategies.