Posted: February 11th, 2016

Problem: You have been assigned the job of forecasting your firm’s sales. Sales for the past 10 periods are as following:

Problem:

You have been assigned the job of forecasting your firm’s sales.

Sales for the past 10 periods are as following:

PERIOD SALES

1 188

2 255

3 355

4 344

5 399

6 422

7 401

8 477

9 499

10 502

You wish to forecast sales for period #11. What is the forecast for period #11 using the following methods:

a. Naïve Forecast

b. 3-period moving average

c. 3-period moving average, using weights of .5, .3 and .2

d. Exponential smoothing, assuming a period 2 forecast of 188 and an alpha of .4

e. Linear trend, using regression analysis and Excel as done in the example problem.