Machine learning-based sales forecasting during crises: Evidence from a Turkish women's clothing retailer.

Journal: Science progress
PMID:

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Retail involves directly delivering goods and services to end consumers. Natural disasters and epidemics/pandemics have significant potential to disrupt supply chains, leading to shortages, forecasting errors, price increases, and substantial financial strains on retailers. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for retail sectors to prepare for crisis impacts on sales forecasts by regularly assessing and adjusting sales volumes, consumer behavior, and forecasting models to adapt to changing conditions.

Authors

  • Kiymet Tabak Kizgin
    Department of Industrial Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkiye.
  • Selcuk Alp
    Department of Statistics, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkiye.
  • Nezir Aydin
    Department of Industrial Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Besiktas, Istanbul, Turkey.
  • Hao Yu
    Shanghai Key Lab of Trustworthy Computing, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.