The importance of an accurate sales forecast to financial management in general is well documented. Although large firms' forecasting practices as they relate to financial management have been surveyed, this is the first such study on small (manufacturing) firms. Surprisingly, the two groups are...

This chapter deals with forecasting sales (in units or money), where an explicit distinction is made between sales of durable goods (computers, cars, books) and sales of utilitarian products (SKU level in supermarkets). Invariably, sales forecasting amounts to a combination of statistical...

The purpose of this article is to study consumer innovativeness and to explore various consumer motivations behind adoption of innovation. Consumers may have different motivations behind adoption of an innovation. Most of the researchers researched different categories of consumer needs which...

As Ouellet (2006) noted, Introduction of really new products by organizations is not a risk-free strategy for companies, some having less success at it than others. Factors such as changing consumer behavior towards really new products based on segments of adopters, product-related issues (e.g....

One of the most important stages in the budget drafting process is the sales forecasting. As a matter of fact, the sales affect the whole activity of a company, their variation being considered the main risk factor for the performance and the financial position of the company. Sales forecasting...

The two reports and two articles (as well as a Commentary) that follow are the finalists from the 2004 ISMS Practice Prize Competition, representing the best examples of rigor plus relevance that our profession produces.

Innovation is one of the most important issues in business research today. It has been studied in many independent research traditions. Our understanding and study of innovation can benefit from an integrative review of these research traditions. In so doing, we identify 16 topics relevant to...

At the heart of a new product sales-forecasting model for consumer packaged goods is a multiple-event timing process. Even after controlling for the effects of time-varying marketing mix covariates, this timing process is not a stationary one, which means the standard interpurchase time models...

Previous research has shown that the forecast accuracy is to be distinguished from the performance of the forecasts when utility measures are employed. This is particularly true in an inventory management context, where the interactions between forecasting and stock control are not yet fully...

Firm-level sales forecasts for retailers can be improved if we incorporate cost of goods sold, inventory, and gross margin (defined by us as the ratio of sales to cost of goods sold) as three endogenous variables. We construct a simultaneous equations model, estimated using public financial and...