Forecasting Practices in Brazilian Food Industries

The purpose of this paper is to study the forecasting practices that have been used by food industries in Brazil. The objective is to detect how these companies have been used forecasting methods, what are the main factors that influence their choice and what are the main difficulties in the use of forecasting methods. Based on literature review, a questionnaire was developed and sent to a sample of 450 food companies from ABIA (Brazilian Association of Food Industries) which represents 70% of the universe, and a response rate of 14.4% was achieved. Data were analyzed by multivariate statistics techniques using the SPSS software. The results show that the companies don’t use sophisticated forecasting methods; the historical analysis model is the most used. The factors that influence the choice of the models are the type of product and the time spent during the forecasting, and the main difficulties are the availability of software and difficulty in understanding.