Aggregation systems for sales forecasting

Abstract

Sales forecasting consists of calculating the expected sales of a specific product or company. An important issue when dealing with sales forecasting is the calculation of the average sales, usually using the arithmetic mean or the weighted average. This study introduces new methods for calculating the average sales. These methods are two modern aggregation operators: the ordered weighted average, and the unified aggregation operator. The main advantage of this approach is the possibility to deal with uncertain and complex environments in a more complete way. The study develops some key examples through multi-person and multi-criteria techniques. The study also presents a numerical example regarding the calculation of the average sales of a product in a set of countries.