Retailers, How Accurate Were Your Black Friday Forecasts This Year?

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As the dust settles in the aftermath of the highly-anticipated Black Friday and Cyber Monday madness, retailers are gauging how successful the weekend was and what it means moving beyond this holiday season. So far, the outlook hasn’t been too sunny. Retailers rely on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to make their goals for the year and lower than expected sales can spell big trouble.

Retailers could benefit significantly from better foresight into consumer behavior and change the ultimate outcome of their most critical days of the year. Most importantly, this kind of insight would help them make better decisions for their business in terms of product stock numbers, price points, sales, discount strategies and other crucial metrics. During the holidays, new products are debuted to the public- some are swept up and instantly sell-out while others are left by the wayside, leaving stores with overstock. If retailers were able to better predict the level of sales on these days, they would have a greater chance of stocking the right stores, with the right amount of the right products.

How could they increase intelligence regarding these issues? Simple. They can leverage collective intelligence from stores, employees and buyers to understand what items are likely to be hot. Using this aggregated intelligence can help make better decisions about what to stock in stores or promote online. Bringing Crowdcast technology takes some of the guess work out of predicting product sales numbers and overall sales potential.

Prediction Markets would provide enormous insight to retailers who are desperately trying to minimize risks, ascertain realistic product quantities and gain a more reliable projection of how businesses can get the most out of the year’s most critical shopping days.