Teaching Forecasting to the Masses: Little Decision Support Training, but a lot of Answers

Abstract

Recent calls within the discipline have indicated that forecasting should be an important part of a marketing student’s curricula. However, the goal of providing the student with usable forecasting knowledge is a very difficult task. Certainly, the development and diffusion of sophisticated and user- friendly forecasting software has made certain aspects of providing this information to students easier. Unfortunately, the availability of this complex technology does not insure that the forecasting knowledge disseminated in the classroom is appropriate or useful to the student as they enter the business world. The authors argue that the successful outcome of an undergraduate forecasting class is gauged by the student’s ability to understand forecasting as an integral component of an organization’s decision support network rather than by the number of forecasting techniques presented to the student.