Demand Estimation & Forecasting

Target is the second biggest retail company after Walmart. Native New Yorker, George Draper Dayton first built a company named Dayton Dry Goods Company in 1902 in the Minneapolis area which is now known as target headquarter. Walmart faced the out of stock issue problem last year and now their biggest competitor, Target, also has faced the same problem this year. Target has a problem keeping the availability of the product in their stores in Canada. It resulted in a huge loss of money and closing down their stores. The CEO of Target said that this is a serious problem and must been solved.

Forecasting should include the use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to forecast demand for its products.

Use the sales forecaster’s predication to describe a normal probability distribution that can be used to approximate the demand distribution. Sketch the distribution and show its mean and standard deviation.

17 In regression analysis, the coefficient of determination R2 measures the amount of variation in y

The current demand forecasting method is based on qualitative techniques more than quantitative ones. If the forecast is not accurate, the company would carry both inventory and stock out costs. It might lose customers due to shortage of supply or carry additional holding costs due to excess production. If the actual demand doesn’t match the forecast ones, and the forecast was too high, this will result in high inventories, obsolescence, asset disposals, and increased carrying costs. When a forecast is too low, the customer resorts to a competitive product or retailer. A supplier could lose both sales and shelf space at that retail location forever if their predictions continue to be inaccurate. The tolerance level of the average consumer

* Customer demand: Rather than basing on history and forecast sale of its products, the company should pay more attention in analyzing some uncontrollable factors such as inflation, recession, and currency exchange rate which may affect customers’ buying behavior.

* Correlation coefficient (R-squared) – This represents how well the independent variables (X) explain the response variable (Y).

Apple Inc. is one of the largest technology companies in the world. The company develops consumer electronic gadgets such as smartphones, computers, desktops, laptops, iPods and tablets. The company was formed in 1976 by Steve Jobs with an intention of making computers but later it changed its focus to include the manufacturing of consumer electronics. However, the company was dealt a big blow when its chief executive officer and founder Steve Jobs died. The company will therefore have to search for ways in which it will maintain its market dominance as well as capture new and emerging markets. This research therefore seeks to establish how Apple forecasts demand and manages its inventory (Apple Computer Inc., 2006).

Forecasting is the methodology utilized in the translation of past experiences in an estimation of the future. The German market presents challenges for forecasting techniques especially for its retail segment. Commercially oriented organizations are used to help during forecasting as general works done by academic scientists are not easy to come across (Bonner, 2009).

The coefficient of determination or r2: It determines the proportion of variation in the dependent variable by the independent variable.

Explain how the demand curves for normal products and for prestige products differ, what are demand shifts and why are they important to marketers? How do firms go about estimating demand? How can marketers estimate the elasticity of demand?

Market demand and growth forecasting: Zenith can't completely rely on historical data to forecast market demand and growth. It must do extra researches to ensure a more accurate estimate for the demand and growth model. The necessary researches should include past data analysis; current demand estimating; future demand estimating; survey of buyer's intentions; sales forecasting; and gathering of expert's opinions......

But even this is not possible in case of a new product or innovation. A forecast of sales, demand, cash, requirements and several such business valuables are extremely essential for a business in order to be able to appropriately plan and conduct its operations in an effective and efficient manner. Yet, forecasts cannot be made accurately as there are several factors and changes in the current environment that leads to variations in forecasts and impacts or causes a manager to make changes in the forecasts.

1.Detail and discuss alt the challenges you faced in projecting demand: meeting customer needs and wants, pricing, competitive actions and competitive response. How did your decisions impact your end performance (market share, income statement)?

Before, the concept of demand forecast was to serve the key functional groups in achieving their own interest. Facing the new challenges, forecast needed to be more accurate. And therefore it needed a new concept that is to have a consensus forecasting that would accurately reveal market demand and align the needs of key actors in the forecasting process. Leitax implemented two specific changes in forecasting process. The first one is to switch the focus from sell-in to sell-through and second one is to ignore capacity constraints.