Variations in retail sales between cities for furniture, home furnishings and equipment

Market forecasting is a difficult task. Unfortunately, this difficulty cannot be entirely removed by hard work and intelligence. Whether the market analyst is considering a market forecast for a product category or an individual product, he must deal with phenomena which have, or appear to have, a random nature about them. It is this very problem, however, that creates the necessity for scientific techniques. Market analysts cannot afford to substitute hunches and intuition for scientific analysis. One study showed that if sales are ten percent short of projections, profit could lag up to forty percent behind expectations. It is hoped that this investigation will assist market analysts in conducting further research in the area of market or company forecasting.