1 INTRODUCTION

The project titled Crowd Sourcing` is a web application Ior Market analysis and
prediction / Decision support system using the crowd`s collective intelligence. The main
idea behind the project is to integrate the intelligence and opinion oI a group oI people Ior
making accurate decisions. It collects inIormation Irom a number oI people round the
Globe and analyzes this inIormation to derive the optimal conclusion. This is
accomplished by Collective Intelligence.

Collective Intelligence (CI) is deIined as the ability oI a group to
solve more problems than its individual members. This deIinition could certainly be
expanded to include other types oI cognition besides problem solving. For example, a
group that makes better decisions than its individual members might be considered to
exhibit Collective Intelligence. Similarly a group that makes more accurate stock
Iorecasts than its individual members might also be said to exhibit Collective
Intelligence.

Simply put, when Collective Intelligence is operating, many minds are better than
one. Applying Collective Intelligence to the domain oI stock price Iorecasting, one could
imagine a system that would combine the inIormation, processing power, and judgment
oI many minds to create collective price Iorecasts that were more accurate than those
produced by most individual investors.

OB1ECTIVE

The aim oI this project is to develop a web application Ior market analysis and prediction
which can be used by business users and companies. The business today is primarily based the
customers and their needs. Thus a thorough investigation oI market is needed Ior identiIying the
target markets` demographic makeup, to reduce Iinancial risk, to identiIy customer tastes etc.
The platIorm enables the users to get inputs Irom the crowd oI users and help to arrive at more
accurate decisions.

Business users can ask questions about Iuture market events (like what percent increase
in some product's price will be acceptable Ior the current market?). Other users then gave
answers and predicted the outcome. Answers Irom respondents can be shown in charts and
reports, by age, location oI respondents (demographic inIo.) so that the business users can make
decisions based on this. Results can be analyzed by locations, age groups, buying power, etc. In
the proposed system, the decision making process is made easy by using a weightage scale Ior
the responses accuracy based on the previous predictions made by the respondent.

For example, iI a company was considering increasing the cost oI a product, they could
survey consumers to determine how much more they were willing to pay. The outcome oI the
survey would then set the new price oI the product. The company could Iurther sort the data
based on the demographic inIormation collected on respondents, to ensure that they priced the
product correctly Ior their target market. The demographic analysis oI respondents was very
valuable to companies.