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.