An empirical comparison of sales time series for online and offline channels for commodities in China†

In this paper we make an empirical comparison of sales time series for online and offline channels. In particular, we analyse the sales dynamic and fluctuation level underlying the sales time series in different channels. The accumulative daily sales distributions of commodities are analysed statistically and the daily sales series are also studied from the perspective of complex networks. We find that most of the commodities' accumulative sales distributions can be fitted by power-law distributions. Visibility graphs are constructed for the daily sales series, and the accumulative degree distributions are also investigated – it is found that they also almost follow power-law distribution. The constant parameter α indicates that different specifications of the same goods have different sales characteristics, and different forms of packaging of commodities, either special offer or ordinary, also show distinctive sales fluctuation levels. The differences show that the direction of these relationships is opposite for online and offline channels.

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