Building forecasting model of automobile industry based on Grey theory: A case study of Nissan motor corporation

Abstract

Forecasting a future development is always an important issue found in various fields, ranging from economics through physics to engineering. In recent years, the grey forecasting model has achieved good prediction accuracy with limited data and has been widely used in various research fields. This study presents a review of theory on Grey system theory to form the basis for forecasting the performance of automobile companies in the next few years. Grey Theory is truly a multidisciplinary and generic theory that deals with systems which characterized with poor information or which information is lacking. This study based on Grey system theory to forecast the Net sales which data are few and the behaviors of systems are unknown. Data used in this study are obtained from the annual report 2014 of the Nissan Motor Corporation for the forecasting of net sales in the4 coming years (i.e., 2014 to 2017). For the current research, in the first phase, the original predicted values of net sales are obtained individually by the GM (1, 1) and DGM (1, 1) model. Secondly, the forecasting results of two models are compared by Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). Interestingly, this study found that the accuracy levels of these two models are much the same with the excellent ability. Finally, by referring the expectations and forecasting of sales activities of Nissan Motor Corporation in different market in the world, this study would like to compare and report the analysis of sales and marketing activities through this current study. In the meantime, this study also shows the research implications and managerial applications by doing the task of forecasting sales and net sales.