{
  "methodology_id": "consumer-intent-v1.0.0",
  "product": "exmxc Consumer Intent Graph",
  "public_instrument": "exmxc Consumer Intent Pulse",
  "status": "production-foundation",
  "effective_date": "2026-09-21",
  "definition": "Consumer Intent Graph measures observed digital consumer intent and wallet behavior extracted from naturally occurring public signals.",
  "north_star": "Where is the consumer wallet moving before conventional financial data fully reveals the shift?",
  "construct_boundary": {
    "measures": [
      "publicly expressed purchase intent and completed purchase behavior",
      "purchase delay, cancellation, and affordability constraints",
      "trade-down, deal-seeking, and discretionary-spending changes",
      "brand, retailer, product, and category substitution"
    ],
    "does_not_measure": [
      "nationally representative consumer sentiment",
      "population-level prevalence without external calibration",
      "investment recommendations",
      "causal effects of consumer intent on company results"
    ],
    "positioning": "A complementary high-frequency behavioral intelligence layer, not a replacement for household surveys, PCE, retail sales, or company reporting."
  },
  "consumer_actions": [
    "PURCHASE_INTENT",
    "PURCHASE_COMPLETED",
    "PURCHASE_DELAY",
    "PURCHASE_CANCELLED",
    "LOST_INTENT",
    "GAINED_INTENT",
    "TRADE_DOWN",
    "TRADE_UP",
    "BRAND_SUBSTITUTION",
    "RETAILER_SUBSTITUTION",
    "CATEGORY_SUBSTITUTION",
    "DEAL_SEEKING",
    "WAITING_FOR_SALE",
    "DISCRETIONARY_REDUCTION",
    "DISCRETIONARY_EXPANSION",
    "REPEAT_PURCHASE",
    "BRAND_EXIT",
    "BRAND_ENTRY"
  ],
  "factor_definitions": [
    {
      "id": "wallet_stress",
      "label": "Wallet Stress",
      "definition": "Observed affordability, debt, income, or budget pressure affecting consumer choice."
    },
    {
      "id": "purchase_intent",
      "label": "Purchase Intent",
      "definition": "Observed intent or reported action to purchase a product, brand, category, or service."
    },
    {
      "id": "purchase_deferral",
      "label": "Purchase Deferral",
      "definition": "Observed intent to delay or cancel a purchase because of price, uncertainty, promotion timing, or financial constraints."
    },
    {
      "id": "trade_down",
      "label": "Trade-Down",
      "definition": "Observed movement toward a lower-cost product, brand, retailer, experience, or category."
    },
    {
      "id": "deal_sensitivity",
      "label": "Deal Sensitivity",
      "definition": "Observed emphasis on discounts, coupons, clearance, or waiting for promotions."
    },
    {
      "id": "discretionary_appetite",
      "label": "Discretionary Appetite",
      "definition": "Observed willingness to expand or reduce non-essential spending."
    },
    {
      "id": "brand_desire",
      "label": "Brand Desire",
      "definition": "Observed desire for a named brand independent of completed purchase."
    },
    {
      "id": "substitution",
      "label": "Substitution",
      "definition": "Observed movement from one product, brand, retailer, or category to another."
    }
  ],
  "measurement_policy": {
    "composite_index": null,
    "composite_policy": "No aggregate Consumer Intent Pulse is published in v1. Factors remain separate until empirical validation supports a reproducible composite.",
    "reading_unit": "directional evidence balance",
    "reading_formula": "100 * (supporting confidence mass - opposing confidence mass) / total confidence mass",
    "interpretation": "A factor balance summarizes the direction of classified observations in the covered sample. It is not a population percentage.",
    "publication_gates": {
      "minimum_unique_observations": 30,
      "minimum_independent_sources": 3,
      "minimum_collection_days": 5,
      "maximum_single_source_share": 0.6,
      "status_below_gate": "insufficient_evidence"
    },
    "confidence_levels": [
      "low",
      "moderate",
      "high"
    ],
    "confidence_policy": "Confidence reflects classification certainty and evidence coverage, not probability of an investment outcome."
  },
  "pipeline": [
    "relevance",
    "spam_and_duplicate_filtering",
    "consumer_intent_classification",
    "entity_resolution",
    "category_classification",
    "action_extraction",
    "economic_driver_extraction",
    "substitution_detection",
    "horizon_detection",
    "intensity_estimation",
    "confidence_estimation",
    "structured_observation",
    "aggregation",
    "longitudinal_snapshot"
  ],
  "source_policy": {
    "rule": "Collect only public material where access and terms permit, preserve source type and permitted attribution, and do not bypass access controls.",
    "initial_weighting": "No platform-level weighting in v1. Confidence is observation-specific; duplicate clusters count once for aggregation.",
    "future_inputs": "Licensed datasets and APIs can be added without changing the observation ontology."
  },
  "quality_controls": [
    "exact and near-duplicate clustering",
    "source-level concentration checks",
    "spam and bot probability fields",
    "promotion and affiliate flags",
    "explicit unresolved-entity states",
    "methodology and model versioning",
    "immutable dated releases"
  ],
  "limitations": [
    "online population bias",
    "platform demographic bias",
    "bot activity and coordinated campaigns",
    "brand fandom and review bombing",
    "viral-event and news-cycle contamination",
    "geographic uncertainty",
    "uneven category and entity coverage",
    "source and API changes",
    "survivorship and deletion effects",
    "internet observations are not nationally representative polling"
  ],
  "validation_plan": {
    "macro": [
      "retail_sales",
      "pce",
      "category_spending",
      "consumer_surveys"
    ],
    "company": [
      "revenue",
      "comparable_sales",
      "traffic",
      "units",
      "pricing",
      "management_commentary"
    ],
    "market": [
      "analyst_estimate_revisions",
      "earnings_surprise",
      "stock_reaction"
    ],
    "tests": [
      "correlation",
      "lead_lag",
      "hit_rate",
      "period_stability",
      "category_specificity",
      "confidence_intervals_where_meaningful"
    ],
    "causality_claim": false
  }
}