THE PROBLEM OF FORECASTING CONSUMER DEMAND IN ITS CONCEPTUAL FORMULATION

The relevance of the article is due to the lack of due attention in the post-Soviet economic literature to the problems of the methodology of forecasting consumer demand. The purpose of the article is to consider issues related to the conceptual formulation of the problem of developing consumer demand forecasts. In the process of achieving this goal systematic and historical approaches, methods of analysis and synthesis, expert assessments were used. Attention has been drawn to the fact that when the information base for consumer demand forecasting is public observation data, the use of probabilistic statistical methods is unacceptable. It is established that the most important principles for the development of consumer demand forecasts include: 1) considering the specifics of the forecasting object; 2) the systematic nature of the latter; 3) its continuity; 4) multivariate; 5) profitability; 6) verification of results. In this case it is shown: 1) the unreasonableness of allocating as a separate principle the forecasting of consumer demand, the uncertainty of its forecast estimates, their harmonization, and also taking into account the dynamics of demand; 2) wrongfulness to base the synthesis of demand forecast variants on deviations of those variants from the actual data. The most important aspects of the logic of constructing consumer demand forecasts are described and the question of their classification is explained. It has been found out that the following basic methods of forecasting can be distinguished by the criterion for constructing consumer demand forecasts: 1) heuristic, that is, the method of expert assessments; 2) regulatory target; 3) economic and mathematical modelling; 4) comparative; 5) regulatory calculations using average actual consumption rates; 6) morphological. At this, it is pointed to the prospects for improvement of methodological tools of forecasting consumer demand by creating its instruments at the junction of various methods.