Modelling the retail sales of gasoline in a Portuguese metropolitan area

This paper describes the modelling approach for the sales of gasoline in service stations located in a Portuguese metropolitan area. The models were developed for planning purposes in order to assess potential sales of new sites. The estimates produced are more accurate than those made by previous models and are currently being used to support investment decisions of the largest Portuguese company. Starting from a basic multiplicative regression model, several segmentations of the service stations were obtained. Among these, the submodels for service stations located in urban areas and for service stations located along routes produced a better fit. The models reflect, without exception, the importance of the variables representing the size of service station and the ‘traffic’ passing by, as well as variables which express location and road type. The fast growth experienced by this market explains the lesser impact on sales of the area sales potential and of competition.