“…According to Hassan and Nath (2005) the HMM model has the following advantages: (1) a strong statistical basis; (2) the ability to handle new information robustly; (3) the capacity to calculate and forecast similarity modes more efficiently. In recent years, the HMM model has been applied in economic, financial, and management fields, including economics in general (Leng and Wang, 2014) and the study of financial series fluctuations more specifically (Gregoir and Lenglart, 2000;Hassan and Nath, 2005;Korolkiewicz and Elliott, 2008;Oguz and Gurgen, 2008;Liu, 2010;Roamn et al, 2010;Zhu and Cheng, 2013). In the management field, it has been used to study customer relations management (Bouchaffra and Tan, 2004;Shen and Zhao, 2006;Netzer et al, 2008;Sepideh and Aaghaie, 2011) and online purchasing behaviors (Wu et al, 2005).…”