Sales forecasting for fashion retailing service industry : a review

Abstract

Sales forecasting is crucial for many retail operations. It is especially critical for the fashion retailing service industry in which product demand is very volatile and product's life cycle is short. This paper conducts a comprehensive literature review and selects a set of papers in the literature on fashion retail sales forecasting. The advantages and the drawbacks of different kinds of analytical methods for fashion retail sales forecasting are examined. The evolution of the respective forecasting methods over the past 15 years is revealed. Issues related to real-world applications of the fashion retail sales forecasting models and important future research directions are discussed.