Forecasting demand from heterogeneous customers

In many industrial contexts, firms are encountering increasingly uncertain demand. Numerous factors are driving this phenomenon; however, a major change that is spreading among different sectors is the ever growing attention to customers. Companies have identified that customers are critical not only because they directly influence the success of specific products or firms, but also because they play a fundamental role in many internal processes. Although the role of customers in business processes has been deeply analyzed, the issue of demand forecasting and the role of customers has not been fully explored. In the present study we examine the impact of heterogeneity of customer requests on demand forecasting approaches, based on three action research cases. Based on the analysis of customer behaviour, we design an appropriate methodology for each case based on clustering customers according to their demand patterns.