The owner of the Chocolate Outlet Store wants to forecast chocolate demand. Demand for the preceding four years is shown in the following table:
YEAR DEMAND (POUNDS)
1 .......... 68,800
2 .......... 71,000
3 .......... 75,500
4 .......... 71,200
Forecast demand for Year 5 using the following approaches:
(a) A three-year moving average;
(b) A three-year weighted moving average using .40 for Year 4, .20 for Year 3 and .40 for Year 2;
(c) Exponential smoothing with α = .30, and assuming the forecast for Period 1 = 68,000.