This approach of incorporating
the individual’s previous choice experience has been adopted in many works
analyzing brand choice (e.g., Chintagunta & Prasad, 1998). In a previous work to
this, as well as estimating this previous loyalty variable, the initialization period was
used to incorporate the heterogeneity of the individuals’ preferences through a
historic loyalty variable. But, in the model, following principles of parsimony, we
opted to include only the individuals’ previous loyalty2 because this had the most
significant effect in the estimation of their choice behavior and improved the
explanation of consumer choice behavior.3