Demand Forecasting for B2B Electronic Products: The Case of Personal Computer Market*

Abstract

Abstract Submitted：October 19, 2015 1 st Revision：November 28, 2015 Accepted：December 2, 2015* 이 논문은 2014년도 서울시립대학교 연구년 교수 연구비에 의하여 연구되었음.** 서울시립대학교 경영대학 박사과정, 제1저자*** 서울시립대학교 경영대학 교수, 교신저자**** 서울시립대학교 경영대학 교수As the uncertainty of demand in B2B electronics market has incr eased, firms need a strong method to estimate the market demand. An accurate prediction on the market demand is crucial for a firm not to overproduce or under-produce its goods, which would influence the performance of the firm. However, it is complicated to estimate the demand in a B2B market, particularly for the private sector, be cause firms are very diverse in terms of size, industry, and types of business. This study proposes both qualitative and quantitative demand forecasting approaches for B2B PC products. Four different measures for predicting PC products in B2B market with consideration of the different PC uses-personal work, common work, promotion, and welfare-are developed as the qualitative model’s input variables. These measures are verified by survey data collected from exper ts in 139 firms, and can be applied when individual firms estimate the demand of PC goods in a B2B market. As the q uantitative approach, the multiple regression model is proposed and it includes variables of region, type of industry, and size of the firm. The regression model can be applied when the aggregated demand for overall domestic PC mark et needs to be estimated.