Number of sales forecast methods and marketing management

The links between the number of sales forecasting methods used by a company, the propensity to include objective ones, forecast accuracy, organization, and process are examined in this paper. The results suggested a ‘U’ relationship whereby both high and low accuracies were associated with high numbers and medium accuracy with low numbers. As the number of methods increased, the likelihood of including objective ones rose accordingly. Different organizational involvement and decision-making frameworks were found to affect the number of methods. Organizationally, the number of methods was higher when top management inspected the forecast and a wide range of parties was involved. With process, the number of methods was higher when the process was bottom-up and bottom-up/top-down. The central marketing management issue addressed is how to raise the number of forecast methods used and thereby increase the propensity to include objective methods. Additionally, wide participation should be allowed within a bottom-up approach with an effective decision support system. A number of practical suggestions are offered to achieve this goal.