Employees at stores owned by the nationwide Corbin Grocery chain frequently hand out free samples of new food products to entice shoppers to purchase new products. Sometimes the free sample distribution leads to stockouts of the product if management has not adequately predicted the demand for the new product. Other times, the chain is left with excess inventory of the new product. Management suspects that the number of free samples distributed can help to predict sales of the new products. The controller at Corbin’s headquarters has gathered data on the free sample distributions and related new product sales at all Corbin stores for the past 60 days. The following is a sample of the table of the records in that Excel file. Access the full data set online in the MyLab Accounting exercise.

Requirements
1. Create a scatterplot with a linear trendline. Use a Forward Forecast of 100 units.
2. Does the scatterplot indicate that the distribution of free samples can help to predict unit sales of new products? How can you tell?
3. Use the FORECAST.LINEAR function to predict new product sales at the levels of 9,000, 9,500, and 10,000 free samples. Does it appear that the number of free samples distributed will be a good predictor of sales of new products? How can you tell?
4. How many units of a new product could Corbin expect to sell if it distributes 9,000 free samples of that new product?
5. How many units of a new product could Corbin expect to sell if it distributes 10,700 free samples of that new product?

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1 Day 1 234 A 5 6 7 8 9 23 2 4 5 6 7 8 B Number of Free Samples Distributed 5,850 8,175 9,600 6,525 9,000 4,050 5,100 7,950 C New Product Unit Sales 3,861 5,150 6,912 4,658 5,616 2,794 3,151 5,390