APPLICATION OF THE DELPHI METHOD TO SHORT-RANGE PRICE PREDICTIONS ON THE FRUIT MARKET

Delphi is a method to use expert opinion about future developements in a systematic way.
It was developed for long-range economical predictions by scientists of the Rand Corporation.
The Delphi method uses iterative questioning of a group of experts in a manner protecting the anonymity of their responses.
Feedback of results follows each step of questioning.
The process continues until no further convergence of the experts’ opinion is to be expected.

Expert opinion is not only useful in long-range predictions but also in short-range ones.
In this paper two examples are given to show that the Delphi method can be applied to short-range price predictions on the fruit market.

In a very erratic price situation (for instance when a new season is starting) two or three iterations of questioning the experts may be needed before a good prediction can be given (appendix 1). But when the market is stable the results of forecasting are satisfactory when applying only one round of the Delphi process (appendix 2).

V Symposium on Horticultural Economics

H. Janssen

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1978.77.23