Abstract
This paper describes a simulation of purchase in a store by customers using Cellular Automata(CA). CA was developed by John von Neuman and Stanislaw Ulam in 1940s, and considered as a class of computer modeling techniques of Complex Systems in which the local interactions of components of the system emerge the whole phenomenon. In CA algorithm, the simulation space is devided into discrete areas called “cells”, and the whole phenomenon can be emerged just by the local neighbor interactions between each state variables defined on each cell. In contrast with the conventional approach to engineering problems, it is not necessary to set up the governing equation of the system to be considered. The behavior of purchase of customers in a store is a typical example of Complex Systems. In the present paper, the local neighbor rules are derived expressing the movement of customers in a store considering the degree of attraction of goods on the shelves in several cases of “planned purchase” and “unplanned purchase” of customers. The simulated results are quite similar to those in actual stores.
