Surveying forecasting: a review and directions for future research

How is forecasting doing in today's world? It is a question researchers have been asking for a long time. For half a century, we have been surveying practitioners, conference attendees, other academics, managers and high-level executives. From the introduction of forecasting in organisations onward, we have questioned technique use and familiarity, accuracy and evaluation methods, the place of forecasting within organisations and the hurdles and barriers that prevent forecasting from evolving as fast in practice as it does in academia. This paper summarises these findings and concludes with a number of recommendations for future surveys, as we will need to continue tracking the state of the art of forecasting practice. Recommendations includes surveying the analysts rather than the forecasting managers, using an international sample, focussing on process-oriented performance measures and looking into the barriers that prevent a more widespread adoption of sophisticated forecasting techniques.