• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-29
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• 2008

The objective of our study is to provide an exploratory model for forecasting sales take-off timing of a product in the context of multi-national markets. We evaluated the usefulness of key predictors such as multiple market information, product attributes, price, and sales for the forecasting of sales take-off timing by applying the suggested model to monthly sales data for PDP and LCD TV provided by a Korean electronics manufacturer. We have found some important results for global companies from the empirical analysis. Firstly, innovation coefficients obtained from sales data of a particular product in other markets can provide the most useful information on sales take-off timing of the product in a target market. However, imitation coefficients obtained from the sales data of a particular product in the target market and other markets are not useful for sales take-off timing of the product in the target market. Secondly, price and product attributes significantly influence on take-off timing. It is noteworthy that the ratio of the price of the target product to the average price of the market is more important than the price ofthe target product itself. Lastly, the cumulative sales of the product are still useful for the prediction of sales take-off timing. Our model outperformed the average model in terms of hit-rate.