Definitive Guides for Supply Chain Management Professionals (Collection)

5. Incorporating Market Intelligence into the Forecast

As a marketing professor, I am constantly subjected to the good-natured needling from my supply chain management colleagues. One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons constitutes one of their favorite pieces of ammunition. In this strip, Dilbert makes the observation that “Marketing is liquor and guessing.” Well, I made the point in Chapter 2, “Demand Forecasting as a Management Process.” that forecasting is, at its core, guessing about the future. I won’t agree that liquor is involved, but it is certainly the case that the “guessing” that is inherent in demand forecasting can be upgraded to “informed guessing” by the inclusion of market intelligence as a part of the forecasting process. That is ...