engleski

Sales Forecasting Methods: Accuracy and Selection

Different statistical sales forecasting methods and different accuracy measures are presented in the paper. Accuracy measures are of great value to managers in deciding which of the forecasting methods should be used. It is very difficult to assess the accuracy of qualitative forecasting methods and to make a comparison among different methods for quantitative forecasting methods. Various methods use different procedures in the fitting phase. These differences make a comparison on a single criterion measure often incomplete. Forecasting methods are different in purpose, content and degree of complexity. The first part of the paper is a review of most used quantitative (statistical) methods in sales forecasting and some accuracy measures. (The choice of an appropriate forecasting method based on different but comparable accuracy measures was applied on the real (actual) time series (52-months sales observations expressed in the number of sold products for one Croatian company).

Sales forecasting methods; Smoothing methods; Forecasting accuracy; Direction – of change measure.

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