forecast demand are those in which the product is entirely unknown to the consumer. For example, when the microwave oven was first launched, everyone already had an oven of some sort. There were various health risks suggested, and consumers needed to learn to cook in a different way. How would you predict this type of market - who would you target the product to? These problems seem easy in retrospect, but at that time, they would have been quite difficult to overcome. One of the initial decisions that needs to be made in terms of forecasting is the time period over which you are attempting to forecast. Sometimes it is important to have long range forecasts so that you can set up factories; in other cases production amounts may be able to be altered at relatively small cost and little inconvenience. When you consider predicting demand you also need to think about whether the demand will be the same all through the year. If you launch a new ice-cream you could probably predict that demand would be highest when the weather was hottest. How would this affect your forecast? You also need to consider whether you are going to try and estimate what the demand for a product will be now, under the current circumstances, and what demand may be in the future. Estimating the future demand for a product may involve also estimating what the likelihood of competitors entering the market will be, or what the reactions of current competitors is likely to be. ...
