• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.480-490
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• 2021

Sales forecasting is crucial for many retail operations. For apparel retailers, accurate sales forecast for the next season is critical to properly manage inventory and plan their supply chains. The challenge in this increases because apparel products are always new for the next season, have numerous variations, short life cycles, long lead times, and seasonal trends. In this study, a sales forecasting model is proposed for apparel products using machine learning techniques. The sales data pertaining to outerwear items for four years were collected from a Korean sports brand and filtered with outliers. Subsequently, the data were standardized by removing the effects of exogenous variables. The sales patterns of outerwear items were clustered by applying K-means clustering, and outerwear attributes associated with the specific sales-pattern type were determined by using a decision tree classifier. Six types of sales pattern clusters were derived and classified using a hybrid model of clustering and decision tree algorithm, and finally, the relationship between outerwear attributes and sales patterns was revealed. Each sales pattern can be used to predict stock-keeping-unit-level sales based on item attributes.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.157-167
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• 2006

Estimating the effects of price increase on a company's sales is important task faced by managers. If consumer has prior information on price increase or expects it, there would be stockpiling and subsequent drops in sales. In addition, consumer can suppress demand in the short run. These factors make the sales dynamic and unstable. In this paper we develop a time series model to evaluate the sales patterns with stockpiling and short-term suppression of demand and also propose a forecasting procedure. For estimation, we use panel data and extend the model to Bayesian hierarchical structure. By borrowing strength across cross-sectional units, this estimation scheme gives more robust and reasonable result than one from the individual estimation. Furthermore, the proposed scheme yields improved predictive power in the forecasting of hold-out sample periods.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.196-209
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• 2015

Retail sales forecast is a special area of forecasting. Its unique characteristics call for unique data models and treatment, and unique forecasting processes. In this paper, we will address lessons learned and challenges encountered in retail sales forecast from a practical and technical perspective. In particular, starting with the data models of retail sales data, we proceed to address issues existing in estimating and processing each component in the data model. We will discuss how to estimate the multi-seasonal cycles in retail sales data, and the limitations of the existing methodologies. In addition, we will talk about the distinction between business events and forecast events, the methodologies used in event detection and event effect estimation, and the difficulties in compound event detection and effect estimation. For each of the issues and challenges, we will present our solution strategy. Some of the solution strategies can be generalized and could be helpful in solving similar forecast problems in different areas.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

Analysis of future business or investment opportunities, such as business feasibility analysis and company or technology valuation, necessitate objective estimation on the relevant market and expected sales. While there are various ways to classify the estimation methods of these new sales or market size, they can be broadly divided into top-down and bottom-up approaches by benchmark references. Both methods, however, require a lot of resources and time. Therefore, we propose a data-based intelligent demand forecasting system to support evaluation of new business. This study focuses on analogical forecasting, one of the traditional quantitative forecasting methods, to develop sales forecasting intelligence systems for new businesses. Instead of simply estimating sales for a few years, we hereby propose a method of estimating the sales of new businesses by using the initial sales and the sales growth rate of similar companies. To demonstrate the appropriateness of this method, it is examined whether the sales performance of recently established companies in the same industry category in Korea can be utilized as a reference variable for the analogical forecasting. In this study, we examined whether the phenomenon of "mean reversion" was observed in the sales of start-up companies in order to identify errors in estimating sales of new businesses based on industry sales growth rate and whether the differences in business environment resulting from the different timing of business launch affects growth rate. We also conducted analyses of variance (ANOVA) and latent growth model (LGM) to identify differences in sales growth rates by industry category. Based on the results, we proposed industry-specific range and linear forecasting models. This study analyzed the sales of only 150,000 start-up companies in Korea in the last 10 years, and identified that the average growth rate of start-ups in Korea is higher than the industry average in the first few years, but it shortly shows the phenomenon of mean-reversion. In addition, although the start-up founding juncture affects the sales growth rate, it is not high significantly and the sales growth rate can be different according to the industry classification. Utilizing both this phenomenon and the performance of start-up companies in relevant industries, we have proposed two models of new business sales based on the sales growth rate. The method proposed in this study makes it possible to objectively and quickly estimate the sales of new business by industry, and it is expected to provide reference information to judge whether sales estimated by other methods (top-down/bottom-up approach) pass the bounds from ordinary cases in relevant industry. In particular, the results of this study can be practically used as useful reference information for business feasibility analysis or technical valuation for entering new business. When using the existing top-down method, it can be used to set the range of market size or market share. As well, when using the bottom-up method, the estimation period may be set in accordance of the mean reverting period information for the growth rate. The two models proposed in this study will enable rapid and objective sales estimation of new businesses, and are expected to improve the efficiency of business feasibility analysis and technology valuation process by developing intelligent information system. In academic perspectives, it is a very important discovery that the phenomenon of 'mean reversion' is found among start-up companies out of general small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as stable companies such as listed companies. In particular, there exists the significance of this study in that over the large-scale data the mean reverting phenomenon of the start-up firms' sales growth rate is different from that of the listed companies, and that there is a difference in each industry. If a linear model, which is useful for estimating the sales of a specific company, is highly likely to be utilized in practical aspects, it can be explained that the range model, which can be used for the estimation method of the sales of the unspecified firms, is highly likely to be used in political aspects. It implies that when analyzing the business activities and performance of a specific industry group or enterprise group there is political usability in that the range model enables to provide references and compare them by data based start-up sales forecasting system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.868-889
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• 2022

Fashion companies are using a big data approach as a key strategic analysis to predict and forecast sales. This study investigated the effectiveness of the past sales, web search volume, information amount, brand promotion, and the advertising endorser on the sales forecasting model. The study conducted the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) time series model using the internal and external social big data of a national fashion brand. Results indicated that the brand's past sales, search volume, promotion, and amount of advertising endorser information amount significantly affected the sales forecast, whereas the brand's advertising endorser search volume and information amount did not significantly influence the sales forecast. Moreover, the brand's promotion had the highest correlation with sales forecasting. This study adds to information-searching behavior theory by measuring consumers' brand involvement. Last, this study provides digital marketers with implications for developing profitable marketing strategies on the basis of consumers' interest in the brand and advertising endorser.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1232-1245
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• 2021

In this study, prediction of product sales as they relate to changes in temperature is proposed. This model uses long short-term memory (LSTM), which has shown excellent performance for time series predictions. For verification of the proposed sales prediction model, the sales of short pants, flip-flop sandals, and winter outerwear are predicted based on changes in temperature and time series sales data for clothing products collected from 2015 to 2019 (a total of 1,865 days). The sales predictions using the proposed model show increases in the sale of shorts and flip-flops as the temperature rises (a pattern similar to actual sales), while the sale of winter outerwear increases as the temperature decreases.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.1053-1069
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• 2020

This study examined the sales pattern relationship with respect to product attributes to propose sales forecasting for fashion products. We analyzed 537 SKU sales data of T-shirts in the domestic sports brand using SAS program. The sales pattern of fashion products fluctuated and were influenced by exogenous factors; therefore, we removed the influence of exogenous factors found to be price discounts and holiday effects as a result of regression analysis. In addition, it was difficult to predict sales using the sales patterns of the same product since fashion products were released as new products every year. Therefore, the forecasting model was proposed using sales patterns of related product attributes when attributes were considered descriptive variables. We classified sales patterns using K-means clustering in order to explain the relationship between sales patterns and product attributes along with creating a decision tree classifier using attributes as input and sales patterns as output. As a result, the sales patterns of T-shirts were clustered into six types that featured the characteristic shape of peak and slope. It was also associated with the combination of product attributes and their values in regards to the proposed sales pattern prediction model.

• The Journal of Bigdata
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.29-38
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• 2019

In this paper, we propose a sales forecasting model that forecasts the sales volume of short sleeves and outerwear according to the temperature change by utilizing accumulated big data from the online shopping mall 'A' over the past five years to increase sales volume and efficient inventory management. The proposed model predicts sales of short sleeves and outerwear according to temperature changes in 2018 by analyzing sales volume of short sleeves and outerwear from 2014 to 2017. Using the proposed sales forecasting model, we compared the sales forecasts of 2018 with the actual sales volume and found that the error rates are ±1.5% and ±8% for short sleeve and outerwear respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.798-805
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• 2005

Estimating the effects of price increase on a company's sales is important task faced by managers. If consumer has prior information on price increase or expect it, there would be stockpiling and subsequent drops in sales. In addition, consumer can suppress demand in the short run. Above factors make the sales dynamic and unstable. We develop a time series model to evaluate the sales patterns with stockpiling and short term suppression of demand and also propose a forecasting procedure. For estimation, we use panel data and extend the model to Bayesian hierarchical structure. By borrowing strength across cross-sectional units, this estimation scheme gives more robust and reasonable result than one from the individual estimation. Furthermore, the proposed scheme yields improved predictive power in the forecasting of hold-out sample periods.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.849-858
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• 2012

Today, local environmental factors has an influence on our society. Local environmental factors, as well as weather-related natural phenomena, social phenomena are also included. In this paper, numeric factors and categorical factors were analyzed, looking for a local environmental factors affecting the company's sales.Sales model by performing a regression analysis based on this was implemented.Sales model considering the local environment had an accuracy of 88.89%.