Crowd Predictions in Ford to forecast weekly vehicle sales volumes across business units
Crowd Prediction• Tue Aug 18 2020•1 minute read
The opportunity
Ford leveraged crowd predictions to forecast on two crucial topics: weekly sales volumes and predicting which car features would be popular with customers (as proxied in the interim by traditional market research, such as focus groups or surveys).
The outcome
- Crowd predictions outperformed the expert forecast.
- Crowd prediction forecasts achieved a 25% lower mean-squared error (p = 0.104).
- Employee engagement and learning increased.
- 93% of participants stated that they learned novel information about the company from participating.
- 70% of employees who participated in the project did so because of a desire to help the company answer essential questions.
- Employees that participated in crowd predictions (in this case prediction markets) became better over time.
- Participants learned about their ability over time, and the average skill rose.
Source
- Cowgill B, Zitzewitz E. (2015), Corporate prediction markets: Evidence from Google, Ford, and Firm X. A review of Economic Studies.
- Montgomery et al. (2016). Experience from Hosting a Corporate Prediction Market: Benefits beyond the Forecasts. www.houdekpetr.cz/!data/papers/Cowgill%20et%20al%202015.pdf