Forecasting product sales with a stochastic Bass model

Abstract

Abstract With the Bass model and data of previous sales a point estimate of future sales can be made for the purpose of stock management. In order to obtain information about the accuracy of that estimate a confidence interval can be of use. In this study such an interval is constructed from a Bass model extended with a noise term. The size of the noise is assumed to be proportional with the yearly sales. It is also assumed that the deviation from the deterministic solution is sufficiently small to make a small noise approximation. This perturbation takes the form of a time dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process. For the variance of the perturbation an exact expression can be given which is needed in order to obtain confidence intervals.

Keywords

• Bass model
• Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process
• Sensitivity of parameter to data
• Confidence domain