Peak sales time prediction in new product sales: Can a product manager rely on it?

Trichy V. Krishnan, Shanfei Feng and Dipak C. Jain

Journal of Business Research, 2023, vol. 165, issue C

Abstract: Managers dealing with new products need to forecast sales growth, especially the time at which the sales would reach the peak, known as the peak sales time (T*). In most cases, they only have a few initial years’ data to predict T*. Although product managers manage to predict T*, there is no method to date that can predict T* accurately. In this paper, we develop a new metric based on the diffusion modeling framework that can help in assessing the prediction accuracy of T*. This metric is built on the premise that observed sales growth is affected both by the force that systematically varies with time and by the non-systematic random forces. We show that the two forces must be carefully combined to assess if a predicted T* is accurate enough. In addition, we empirically prove the efficacy of the proposed metric.

Keywords: New product diffusion; Peak sales time; Prediction accuracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:165:y:2023:i:c:s0148296323004125

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114054

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