For this assignment, you will be trying to forecast demand and make recommendations in a situation where there is no historical data to reference.

Quincy is an entrepreneur who loves the outdoors. After saving money through the years, Quincy now plans to open his own landscaping business. The primary services hell offer are maintenance services such as grass cutting, edging, and bush trimming. Obviously, this will only provide income in the spring, summer, and early fall. Therefore, he plans to offer snow removal in the winter. His goal is to continue to provide those baseline services and expand into actual landscaping work.

Quincys initial challenge is to develop a forecast of how many customers hell have each month. This is essential to determine if he needs to hire any additional labor throughout the season. Unfortunately, none of the jobs Quincy has had involved forecasting. Quincy is a numbers guy and is partial to using a quantitative method if possible, but he doesnt rule out the option of using one of the qualitative methods. He had worked many summers for other yardwork companies. Knowing he wanted to own his own business someday, Quincy took notes on how things went. Since his customer base would be in a series of small towns, Quincy knows he cannot charge as much as the companies that served larger communities. Consequently, volume is necessary to earn the revenue he will need. Quincy focused on three small towns: Smithburg with a population of 700, Emeryville with 1,800, and Golf Creek with 2,500. He believes he can get 10 percent of the homes in each town to hire him. Quincy used information from the county files to estimate that on average, the number of homes is equal to about 25 percent of the population, meaning in Smithburg (700) the potential number of homes is about 175. Quincy believes his calculations are reasonable and could be the foundation for using a qualitative method to kick off his forecasting.

Quincy is also estimating that he will need to visit each customer household once per month during the peak growing months of April through October.

Questions:

What is the total number of households in each of the three communities Quincy is targeting?

Given that number of households, how many customers does Quincy believe he can get? Do you believe this could be enough customers for a profitable business? Why or why not?

Quincy is estimating an average service fee (per visit to a home) of $25. Because of the demographics in those three communities, over time Smithburg will provide 20 percent of the homes as customers, Emeryville still 10 percent, and Golf Creek only 7 percent. Assuming he was charging $25 per home, what effect does this change in monthly forecast have on his monthly revenue? Should he change his price either up or down?

What do you think of Quincys assumption that he will need to visit each customer once per month (does that seem adequate)?

As a marketer, do you have any recommendations for Quincy on how he could grow his customer basewhile staying profitable and keeping up with demand?

Given that Quincy clearly has a passion for the outdoors, and his entrepreneurial dream, what do you imagine might be the biases that might enter into his qualitative forecast? How should Quincy guard against them?