DEMAND FORECASTING IN THE PRESENCE OF UNOBSERVED LOST-SALES

摘要

A demand forecasting system includes a market information processing module that processes a historical sales dataset to provide a lost market rate probability dataset, a lost-sales forecasting module that processes the lost market rate probability dataset to provide a lost-sales dataset, a market size forecasting module that processes the lost market rate probability dataset to provide a market size dataset as a function of the lost market rate probability, a demand forecasting module that processes the lost-sales dataset and the historical sales dataset to provide a demand dataset and a market share dataset as functions of the lost-sales dataset and the historical sales dataset and a best fit optimization module that processes the market size dataset and the market share dataset to provide a set of best fit parameters for the market size and the market share or the demand. A corresponding method is also described.

主权项

1. A system for forecasting demand, the system comprising:
a data retrieval module configured to retrieve a historical sales dataset and corresponding sales attributes dataset for a set of sellable commodities comprising one or more sellable commodities; the data retrieval module further configured to retrieve a functional form dataset for determining a market size model and a market share model for the set of sellable commodities; a market information processing module configured to process the historical sales dataset to provide a lost market rate probability dataset for the set of sellable commodities; a lost-sales forecasting module configured to process the lost market rate probability dataset to provide a lost-sales dataset as a function of the lost market rate probability for the set of sellable commodities; a market size forecasting module configured to process the lost market rate probability dataset to provide a market size dataset as a function of the lost market rate probability for the set of sellable commodities; and a demand forecasting module configured to process the lost-sales dataset and the historical sales dataset to provide a demand dataset and a market share dataset as functions of the lost-sales dataset and the historical sales dataset for the set of sellable commodities.