Topic outline

  • Application of Trend Impact Analysis for predicting future fruit consumption

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    • ●        ISAFRUIT, a European integrated research project, applied Trend Impact Analysis to evaluate changes in trends on all aspects of fruit production and consumption.


  • About

    • ISAFRUIT, a European integrated research project in the horticultural science sector, focused on all aspects of fruit production and consumption by taking a total chain approach. The project assumed that aspects that motivate consumers towards more fruit consumption as well as the causes of changing fruit consumption are crucial to know to implement policies that stimulate fruit consumption.


       


      Trend Impact Analysis (TIA), a method that combines the extrapolation of trends and the expectations of experts about the future, was first introduced by Gordon and Stover in 1976 (Hennen & Benninga, 2009). TIA can be used to explain trends through impact factors and provides an opportunity to deal with uncertain expert predictions. The main advantage of TIA is the opportunity to link events with a trend, the downside is that the method requires a judgment to estimate impacts. The ISAFRUIT project applied TIA to evaluate changes in trends, which allowed the forecaster to stipulate factors that might alter a trend and assess the probabilities of their occurrence.


       


      TIA was applied to four countries to predict future fruit consumption. Based on historic consumption, a trend or baseline was projected, which TIA combines with expert knowledge to forecast future consumption. To handle uncertainty in the TIA model, a Monte Carlo simulation was used and the following steps were taken:


       


      1.     Gathering data on fruit consumption for different countries and calculating the baselines (i.e. trends in recent years) from these data.


      2.     Acquiring information on potential future trends from experts (i.e. expectations of the magnitude or impact and time-frame of certain factors underlying these trends).


      3.     Feeding baselines and experts expectations into the TIA model.


      Six experts from the fruit sector and six consumer experts from outside the fruit sector were asked about events that influenced fruit consumption until 2007 and about the type of events influencing fruit consumption that are likely to happen until 2025. For each of those predicted events, experts were then asked to estimate its impact on past and future fruit consumption (i.e. an increase or decrease) and to assess the probability that these events would occur at different points in the future.


  • Impact

    • The ISAFRUIT project showed that the TIA method is suitable for explaining a trend by means of impact factors and provided an opportunity to deal with uncertain projections by experts. To estimate trend impacts on fruit consumption, the method allowed for quantifying the impacts behind the trends and making the trends more understandable. TIA provided an opportunity to account for events in the future, to combine statistical (historical) data with expert knowledge, to explain a trend by means of impact factors, and to make it possible to deal with uncertainty regarding the prognoses of the experts.


       


      Future trend impact lines were constructed based on the baseline (historic data) and on the aggregated expert information. Findings indicate that deviations from the baseline and the trend impact line were caused by the difference between past and future factors and their degree of influence on fruit consumption. The TIA lines show that the difference between the limits increases when the future lies further away.


  • Resources