Peak sales time prediction in new product sales: Can a product manager rely on it?
针对新产品销售峰值时间（T*）预测缺乏准确评估方法的问题，基于扩散模型框架提出一个新指标，帮助判断预测是否足够准确，并用实证验证其有效性。
Managers dealing with new products need to forecast sales growth, especially the time at which the sales would reach the peak, known as the peak sales time (T*). In most cases, they only have a few initial years’ data to predict T*. Although product managers manage to predict T*, there is no method to date that can predict T* accurately. In this paper, we develop a new metric based on the diffusion modeling framework that can help in assessing the prediction accuracy of T*. This metric is built on the premise that observed sales growth is affected both by the force that systematically varies with time and by the non-systematic random forces. We show that the two forces must be carefully combined to assess if a predicted T* is accurate enough. In addition, we empirically prove the efficacy of the proposed metric.