A GA-based sales forecasting model incorporating promotion factors

Abstract

Because promotions are critical factors highly related to product sales of consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, predictors concerning sales forecast of CPG products must take promotions into consideration. Decomposition regression incorporating contextual factors offers a method for exploiting both reliability of statistical forecasting and flexibility of judgmental forecasting employing domain knowledge. However, it suffers from collinearity causing poor performance in variable identification and parameter estimation with traditional ordinary least square (OLS). Empirical research evidence shows that - in the case of collinearity - in variable identification, parameter estimation, and out of sample forecasting, genetic algorithms (GA) as an estimator outperform OLS consistently and significantly based on a log-linear regression model concerning weekly sales forecasting of CPG products from a manufacturer in both busy and off seasons. © 2010 JMASM, Inc.