Article ID: | iaor20121979 |
Volume: | 28 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 497 |
End Page Number: | 506 |
Publication Date: | Apr 2012 |
Journal: | International Journal of Forecasting |
Authors: | Huang Chun-Yao |
Keywords: | forecasting: applications, datamining, heuristics, simulation: applications |
Simple heuristics are usually deemed to be inferior to more complicated models. Although recent studies have demonstrated the usefulness of some forecasting heuristics, the questions of why and when a heuristic would work remain unaddressed. This study aims to answer such ‘why’ and ‘when’ questions by looking empirically at the specific context of forecasting for customer prioritization. Based on widely‐applied probabilistic models, a series of simulations reveal that: (1) we are not usually able to identify the future top‐