Forecasts of demand are crucial to drive supply chains and enterprise resource
planning systems. Usually, well-known univariate methods that work automatically
such as exponential smoothing are employed to accomplish such
forecasts. The traditional Supply Chain relies on a decentralised system
where each member feeds its own Forecasting Support System (FSS) with
incoming orders from direct customers. Nevertheless, other collaboration
schemes are also possible, for instance, the Information Exchange framework
allows demand information to be shared between the supplier and the retailer.
Current theoretical models have shown the limited circumstances where retailer
information is valuable to the supplier. However, there has been very
little empirical work carried out. This works assesses the role of sharing
market sales information obtained by the retailer on the supplier forecasting
accuracy. Data have been collected from a manufacturer of domestic cleaning
products and a major UK grocery retailer to show the circumstances where
information sharing leads to improved accuracy. We find significant evidence
of benefits through information sharing.