Over the years the U.S. grocery distribution and sales industry has grown. Today, the total industry sales are in the billions of dollars. Major retailers, such as Walmart and Target, added food to complement their merchandise sales and Amazon recently purchased Whole Foods. For many companies, forecasts of industry sales are necessary information to plan for short- and long-term decisions. Using the total U.S. grocery store annual sales in millions of dollars (https://www.census.gov/retail/index.html#mrts) in the following table, respond to the following items.

a. Graph the data.b. Based on the graph, describe the time series pattern.c. For this time series, why is forecasting with a trend model appropriate?d. Evaluate a trend forecasting model using simple linear regression. What are the MAD and MAPE?e. What is the predicted annual change of industry sales?f. Using the trend model, forecast the next 3 years of grocery sales.

Transcribed Image Text:

Year 2012 2013 Sales $563,645 574,547 2014 599,603 2015 613,159 2016 625,295 Year Sales 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 $639,161 661,785 693,015 773,741 803,041