Sales Forecasting by a Firm Facing Poor Data

Fang-Chen Kao ； Yu-Ti Shih ； Che-Yu Hsui

《Asia Pacific Management Review》 12卷3期 (2007/06) Pp. 181-191

並列摘要

The life cycle of new products has been shortened in a great extent due to the speedy advancement of technology and changes in consumers' taste. In order to obtain market shares and maintain competitive advantages, companies must rapidly renew their products to comply with the never satisfied appetites of consumers. However, while there are many uncertainties in introducing new products to the market in addition to insufficient market information, business management has to face enormous risk when making decisions. Thus, with limited market information of new products, a simple cause effect relation analysis method would assist business management to make proper decisions. The study applies Grey forecasting model and Nonlinear least square (NLS) techniques to establish growing trail of new products with only few sales data to help business management in decision making. Grey forecasting model is a forecasting method appropriate for limited information and can forecast with as least as four terms of data. In addition, the study also hypothesized that the original data series, after being accumulated, would appear to be a 3-parametric exponential function, of which characteristic of the data group would be found by a non-linear regression. In this study, we have used sales volume of Phone-Camera Lens both in the world and in Taiwan for empirical testing and the result showed an excellent fit with historical data through Grey forecasting model and NLS techniques. Therefore, the growth trend trail of products obtained by using trend extrapolation method can be provided to management as reference in designing strategy for products and technology management.

並列關鍵字

Grey theory ； forecasting ； NLS ； Optical component industry

參考文獻

(2005).(Information & Communications Technology Report).

(2005).(Information & Communications Technology Report).

Antoniou, P. H,Ansoff, H. I.(2004).Strategic Management of Technology.Technology Analysis & Strategic Management.16(2),275-291.

Bayus, B. L.(1992).The Dynamic Pricing of Net Generation Consumer Durables.Marketing Science.11(3),251-265.

Bayus, B. L.,Jain, S.,Rao, A.G.(1997).Too Little, Too Early: Introduction Timing and New Product Performance in the Personal Digital Assistant Industry.Journal of Marketing Research.34(1),50-63.