Demand Management Revisited

DEMAND MANAGEMENT REVISITED By Larry Lapide (This is an ongoing column in The Journal, which is intended to give a brief view on a potential topic of interest to practitioners of business forecasting. Suggestions on topics that you would like to see covered should be sent via email to llapide@mit.edu). For many years I have felt that the Demand Management (DM) area was not being properly addressed by the business research community, that the DM label was being bandied around too loosely, and that there was confusion about it in industry. People often used the DM label when they talked about demand forecasting. Others used it to signify all the activities involved in generating and shaping customer demand; basically the activities of marketing, merchandizing, and sales managers. In a related way, there appears to be confusion about the difference between demand forecasting and demand planning. Almost six years ago I attempted to add a little clarity to the DM term by writing a column titled “Demand Management Versus Forecasting” in the Winter 2000-2001 issue of The Journal of Business Forecasting. The article described the differences among demand forecasting, planning, ...