Abstract:

In the market under consideration research is not as old as in other markets. A number of companies have not yet given up the practice of judgmental forecasting the market performance of new designs. Therefore we investigated the failures of judgmental forecasting on two levels: compared with consumer tests; and subsequently with real market performance. Traditional testing of new designs was investigated concerning two sources of potential failure: positive test results but poor market performance; and poor test results but remarkable market performance. Later a more sophisticated test technique was compared with traditional testing. Despite improvements we did not stop investigating potential failures here. Learning from the systematic investigation of the described failures we have developed a test system which works in different steps and is much more effective than any previous forecasting procedures.