Pretest Forecaster

Every marketer likes the idea of getting early signals of customer interest for new products. Many direct marketers, however, have held back from pretesting their products out of concern for the reliability of customers' answers to surveys, mock catalogs, or previews mailed ahead of season. Pretest Forecaster resolves those concerns by using a predictive model based on 12 years on research in direct mail pretesting.

Pretest Forecaster is supplied in either of two ways.  The first option is a custom-fitted Excel add-in to use in-house.  The second is a web-based service.  Either way, it automates the model-based interpretation of pretest catalogs or webtests. It combines your buyers' initial pre-season forecasts for each item with the "orders" from the customer pretest to project each item's demand for the life of the catalog. Pretest Forecaster offers tables and graphs to show at a glance which products are likely to become "runaways" or "dogs." giving you extra time to adjust supplies.  Typical output tables (and spreadsheets) are by item, by master item, by department, and by sales rank.  The system also  provides after-the-fact analyses of the pretest's accuracy, once the catalog's actual results are known.

The engine in Pretest Forecaster is also used in our Webtest service in which we manage all the details of conducting and interpreting webtests.

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