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Case Study Of Ted Ralley, The Director Of Marketing Research For An Auto Spare Parts Company

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Executive Summary

The focus of Ted Ralley, the Director of marketing research for an auto spare parts company is to calculate future sales for the upcoming business year. His task is to provide the highest levels of forecasting accuracy. To accomplish this, he utilized historic sales data from four years prior, and the most available forecasting method, time series to conduct several forecasts. He was however still apprehensive about results he garnered using the time series method. He is of the view that economic activity and oil prices plays a significant role in auto parts sales, and to substantiate his views he has decided to forecast using econometric variables. It is his intention to base his forecasting decisions and projections for the upcoming year on results derived from analysis surrounding this theory. An initial analysis was conducted on historic sales data using excel to calculate descriptive statistics. From there several other forecasting models were introduced: Regression with seasons, Regression with factors, Holt Winters Additive and Multiplicative were also used in predicting quarterly sales for 2008. Based on the outcomes it was suggested that for 2008 Ted Ralley would make quarterly predictions utilizing the forecast values obtained from the Regression with Econometric Variables. The analysis conducted proved his theory, that oil prices and economic activities influences auto parts sales.
Background
The demand for auto parts has increased as a result

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