Question

Can there be any suitable method to estimate the number of water bottles sold in a city?

Answer 1

Take a representative sample, find an approximate population number for the city and add it all up?

Answer 2

take assumptions:
1/ Number of people in that city: X
2/ Proportion of people drinking water in bottle vs. tap water: Y
3/ number of liters people drink per day: Z

For 1L bottle: X*Y*Z

Answer 3

and then of course...you multiply by the number of days in a year :)

Answer 4

Y ~ City Pop - pop below $XXX income who cannot afford bottled water - pop above $XXX income who have access to filtered water at home & workplace + pop above $XXX income in transit at any given point in time

Answer 5

sorry. if the above is equal to "A", then Y = A/(City Pop)

Answer 6

an alternative estimate. Pop consuming Non-Tap water = ((City Pop-pop below $XXX income)*no.of liters of water consumed per person) - (Tap Water supply in litres per person*pop above $XXX income.)

Answer 7

Where Tap Water supply in litres per person = Total City Water Supply in litres/City population. This model assumed that only people pop above $XXX income has access to non-tap water either home or workplace. Also, to adjust for water filters at home/workplace, you can estimate the % of people having access to such filtered water and subtract it from the above number. That should give you an estimate of the potential bottled water market.

Answer 8

I still think you're better of with the non-Keynesian, scientific approach. Find out how much bottled water some really small, but representative percentage of the population drink, then do some simple maths. There's no sane reason to start pulling out equations for this ~ just my opinion.

Answer 9

This question reminds me an interview question:
How do you estimate the number of red cars in a city?