Handling of Long term Promotion Planning in Consumer Goods

[Former Member]

We are currently implementing the Demand Planning in a Consumer Goods Client. One of the areas of concern is around handling of long term promotional volumes. We do the Statistical Forecasting of Baseline Volumes and then add the promotional lifts to get a sort of bottom up plan. However the Promotional volumes are available for short term possibly 2-4 months only in many of product range. Hence there needs to be a method to uplift the volumes to get to expected total plans for operational planning.

We are reviewing different alternatives based on my previous experiences :

a)      a) Statistical Forecasting of Total Volumes in long term

b)      b) Using Top Down Business Plans to get the gaps between baseline volumes and Business plans and show them as expected promotional volumes. 

c)       c) Statistical forecast of Promotional volumes as such based on MLR /Promotional base.

I would like to have some inputs around the practices followed in this industry based on your experiences for handling these long term promotional volumes.

Any Inputs are very much appreciated.

Regards

Gaurav

[Former Member]

Hello Gaurav,

Normally when we talk about the Promotion Planning it mostly covers the One Off event or a repeated events. Like trade fairs,sales etc . And these things mostly happens for shorter duration hence we plan promotions for shorter durations.

Now coimg to your questions If you want to plan promotion for longer term you can always do this by defining promtion bases for a longer duartions and then creating promotions based on them.

regards,

Anurag