Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/emu/wpaper/15-21.pdf.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Forecasting Aggregate Retail Sales: The Case of South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Goodness C. Aye

    (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria Author-Email: aye_goody@yahoo.co.uk)

  • Mehmet Balcilar Author-Name-First Mehmet

    (Department of Economics, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, Northern Cyprus)

  • Rangan Gupta

    (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria)

  • Anandamayee Majumdar

    (Soochow University Center for Advance Statistics and Econometric Research, Suzhou, China)

Abstract
Forecasting aggregate retail sales may improve portfolio investors’ ability to predict movements in the stock prices of the retailing chains. Therefore, this paper uses 26 (23 single and 3 combination) forecasting models to forecast South Africa’s aggregate seasonal retail sales. We use data from 1970:01–2012:05, with 1987:01-2012:05 as the out-of-sample period. We deviate from the uniform symmetric quadratic loss function typically used in forecast evaluation exercises. Hence, we consider loss functions that overweight forecast error in booms and recessions to check whether a specific model that appears to be a good choice on average is also preferable in times of economic stress. To this end, we use the weighted RMSE and weighted version of the Diebold-Mariano tests to evaluate the different forecasts. Focussing on the single models alone, results show that their performances differ greatly across forecast horizons and for different weighting schemes. However, the combination forecasts models in general produced better forecasts and are largely unaffected by business cycles and time horizons.

Suggested Citation

  • Goodness C. Aye & Mehmet Balcilar Author-Name-First Mehmet & Rangan Gupta & Anandamayee Majumdar, 2014. "Forecasting Aggregate Retail Sales: The Case of South Africa," Working Papers 15-21, Eastern Mediterranean University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:emu:wpaper:15-21.pdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.economics.emu.edu.tr/RePEc/emu/wpaper/15-21.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Forni, Mario & Hallin, Marc & Lippi, Marco & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2003. "Do financial variables help forecasting inflation and real activity in the euro area?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1243-1255, September.
    2. David Rapach & Jack Strauss, 2010. "Bagging or Combining (or Both)? An Analysis Based on Forecasting U.S. Employment Growth," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5-6), pages 511-533.
    3. Case Karl E. & Quigley John M. & Shiller Robert J., 2005. "Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market versus the Housing Market," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-34, May.
    4. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2002. "Determining the Number of Factors in Approximate Factor Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 191-221, January.
    5. Francisco Dias & Maximiano Pinheiro & António Rua, 2010. "Forecasting using targeted diffusion indexes," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 341-352.
    6. Hyndman, Rob J. & Koehler, Anne B. & Snyder, Ralph D. & Grose, Simone, 2002. "A state space framework for automatic forecasting using exponential smoothing methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 439-454.
    7. Makridakis, Spyros, 1989. "Why combining works?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 601-603.
    8. Carstensen Kai & Wohlrabe Klaus & Ziegler Christina, 2011. "Predictive Ability of Business Cycle Indicators under Test: A Case Study for the Euro Area Industrial Production," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 231(1), pages 82-106, February.
    9. Kapetanios, George & Labhard, Vincent & Price, Simon, 2008. "Forecast combination and the Bank of England's suite of statistical forecasting models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 772-792, July.
    10. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    11. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Forecasting inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 293-335, October.
    12. Case, Karl E. & Quigley, John M. & Shiller, Robert J., 2013. "Wealth Effects Revisited 1975-2012," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 101-128, July.
    13. Barksdale, Hiram C & Hilliard, Jimmy E, 1975. "A Cross-spectral Analysis of Retail Inventories and Sales," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(3), pages 365-382, July.
    14. Xiao, Tiaojun & Qi, Xiangtong, 2008. "Price competition, cost and demand disruptions and coordination of a supply chain with one manufacturer and two competing retailers," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 741-753, October.
    15. James H. Stock & Mark W.Watson, 2003. "Forecasting Output and Inflation: The Role of Asset Prices," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(3), pages 788-829, September.
    16. Dick van Dijk & Philip Hans Franses, 2003. "Selecting a Nonlinear Time Series Model using Weighted Tests of Equal Forecast Accuracy," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(s1), pages 727-744, December.
    17. Luis A. Gil-Alana & Carlos P. Barros & Albert Assaf, 2010. "Retail sales. Persistence in the short term and long term dynamics," Faculty Working Papers 03/10, School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Navarra.
    18. Chanont Banternghansa & Michael W. McCracken, 2011. "Real-time forecast averaging with ALFRED," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 93(Jan), pages 49-66.
    19. Mario Forni & Marc Hallin & Marco Lippi & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2000. "The Generalized Dynamic-Factor Model: Identification And Estimation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 540-554, November.
    20. Zellner, Arnold, 1986. "A tale of forecasting 1001 series : The Bayesian knight strikes again," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 491-494.
    21. Chu, Ching-Wu & Zhang, Guoqiang Peter, 2003. "A comparative study of linear and nonlinear models for aggregate retail sales forecasting," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 217-231, December.
    22. Clemen, Robert T., 1989. "Combining forecasts: A review and annotated bibliography," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 559-583.
    23. Goodness C. Aye & Pami Dua & Rangan Gupta, 2013. "Forecasting Indian Macroeconomic Variables Using Medium-Scale VAR Models," Working Papers 201342, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    24. Thomas A. Garrett & Ruben Hernandez-Murillo & Michael T. Owyang, 2005. "Does consumer sentiment predict regional consumption?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Mar), pages 123-135.
    25. Au, Kin-Fan & Choi, Tsan-Ming & Yu, Yong, 2008. "Fashion retail forecasting by evolutionary neural networks," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 615-630, August.
    26. Spyros Makridakis & Robert L. Winkler, 1983. "Averages of Forecasts: Some Empirical Results," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(9), pages 987-996, September.
    27. Chatfield, Chris, 1992. "A commentary on error measures," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 100-102, June.
    28. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 2002. "Macroeconomic Forecasting Using Diffusion Indexes," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(2), pages 147-162, April.
    29. Yeung Lewis Chan & James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1999. "A dynamic factor model framework for forecast combination," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 91-121.
    30. Harvey, Andrew, 2006. "Forecasting with Unobserved Components Time Series Models," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 327-412, Elsevier.
    31. Harvey, David & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 1997. "Testing the equality of prediction mean squared errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 281-291, June.
    32. Zhou Xia & Carroll Christopher D., 2012. "Dynamics of Wealth and Consumption: New and Improved Measures for U.S. States," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 1-44, March.
    33. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    34. Mark W. Watson & James H. Stock, 2004. "Combination forecasts of output growth in a seven-country data set," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 405-430.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Uddin, Gazi Salah & Tang, Ou & Sahamkhadam, Maziar & Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad & Yahya, Muhammad & Cerin, Pontus & Rehme, Jakob, 2021. "Analysis of Forecasting Models in an Electricity Market under Volatility," ADBI Working Papers 1212, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    2. Tran Tuan Anh, 2015. "Assessing the development potential of modern retail in Vietnam," HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE - ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY, vol. 5(1), pages 31-40.
    3. Emir Zunic & Kemal Korjenic & Kerim Hodzic & Dzenana Donko, 2020. "Application of Facebook's Prophet Algorithm for Successful Sales Forecasting Based on Real-world Data," Papers 2005.07575, arXiv.org.
    4. Chantal Rootman, 2016. "How social media tools influence brand image and buying behaviour in the South African food retail industry," Proceedings of Business and Management Conferences 3405542, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    5. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-562 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Wesley Marcos Almeida & Claudimar Pereira Veiga, 2023. "Does demand forecasting matter to retailing?," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(2), pages 219-232, June.
    7. Hoeltgebaum, Henrique & Borenstein, Denis & Fernandes, Cristiano & Veiga, Álvaro, 2021. "A score-driven model of short-term demand forecasting for retail distribution centers," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 97(4), pages 715-725.
    8. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Barrow, Devon & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2019. "Another look at forecast selection and combination: Evidence from forecast pooling," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 226-235.
    9. Fildes, Robert & Ma, Shaohui & Kolassa, Stephan, 2022. "Retail forecasting: Research and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1283-1318.
    10. Melchior, Cristiane & Zanini, Roselaine Ruviaro & Guerra, Renata Rojas & Rockenbach, Dinei A., 2021. "Forecasting Brazilian mortality rates due to occupational accidents using autoregressive moving average approaches," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 825-837.
    11. Erjiang E & Ming Yu & Xin Tian & Ye Tao, 2022. "Dynamic Model Selection Based on Demand Pattern Classification in Retail Sales Forecasting," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(17), pages 1-16, September.
    12. Fildes, Robert & Ma, Shaohui & Kolassa, Stephan, 2019. "Retail forecasting: research and practice," MPRA Paper 89356, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-475 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Ma, Shaohui & Fildes, Robert, 2020. "Forecasting third-party mobile payments with implications for customer flow prediction," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 739-760.
    15. Arunraj, Nari Sivanandam & Ahrens, Diane, 2015. "A hybrid seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average and quantile regression for daily food sales forecasting," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(PA), pages 321-335.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Timmermann, Allan, 2006. "Forecast Combinations," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 135-196, Elsevier.
    2. Kim, Hyun Hak & Swanson, Norman R., 2018. "Mining big data using parsimonious factor, machine learning, variable selection and shrinkage methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 339-354.
    3. Szafranek, Karol, 2019. "Bagged neural networks for forecasting Polish (low) inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1042-1059.
    4. Mayr, Johannes, 2010. "Forecasting Macroeconomic Aggregates," Munich Dissertations in Economics 11140, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    5. Karim Barhoumi & Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2010. "Are disaggregate data useful for factor analysis in forecasting French GDP?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1-2), pages 132-144.
    6. Huiyu Huang & Tae-Hwy Lee, 2010. "To Combine Forecasts or to Combine Information?," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5-6), pages 534-570.
    7. Hendry, David F. & Hubrich, Kirstin, 2006. "Forecasting economic aggregates by disaggregates," Working Paper Series 589, European Central Bank.
    8. Kim, Hyun Hak & Swanson, Norman R., 2014. "Forecasting financial and macroeconomic variables using data reduction methods: New empirical evidence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 178(P2), pages 352-367.
    9. Nicoletta Pashourtidou & Christos Papamichael & Charalampos Karagiannakis, 2018. "Forecasting economic activity in sectors of the Cypriot economy," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 12(2), pages 24-66, December.
    10. Konstantin Kuck & Karsten Schweikert, 2021. "Forecasting Baden‐Württemberg's GDP growth: MIDAS regressions versus dynamic mixed‐frequency factor models," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(5), pages 861-882, August.
    11. Gupta, Rangan & Kabundi, Alain, 2011. "A large factor model for forecasting macroeconomic variables in South Africa," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1076-1088, October.
    12. Hanan Naser, 2015. "Estimating and forecasting Bahrain quarterly GDP growth using simple regression and factor-based methods," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 449-479, September.
    13. David Rapach & Jack Strauss, 2010. "Bagging or Combining (or Both)? An Analysis Based on Forecasting U.S. Employment Growth," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5-6), pages 511-533.
    14. Naresh Bansal & Jack Strauss & Alireza Nasseh, 2015. "Can we consistently forecast a firm’s earnings? Using combination forecast methods to predict the EPS of Dow firms," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 39(1), pages 1-22, January.
    15. Edda Claus, 2011. "Seven Leading Indexes of New Zealand Employment," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 87(276), pages 76-89, March.
    16. Mark W. Watson & James H. Stock, 2004. "Combination forecasts of output growth in a seven-country data set," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 405-430.
    17. Robert Lehmann, 2016. "Economic Growth and Business Cycle Forecasting at the Regional Level," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 65.
    18. Hansson, Jesper & Jansson, Per & Lof, Marten, 2005. "Business survey data: Do they help in forecasting GDP growth?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 377-389.
    19. Gupta, Rangan & Kabundi, Alain & Miller, Stephen M., 2011. "Forecasting the US real house price index: Structural and non-structural models with and without fundamentals," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 2013-2021, July.
    20. Bjørnland, Hilde C. & Ravazzolo, Francesco & Thorsrud, Leif Anders, 2017. "Forecasting GDP with global components: This time is different," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 153-173.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    seasonality; weighted loss; retail sales forecasting; combination forecasts; South Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:emu:wpaper:15-21.pdf. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mehmet Balcilar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deemuty.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.