If you can find an expert forecast already published, or if you have a budget to pay for an expert forecast, that's a luxury that probably means you don't have to do your own. Many expert forecasts are published where you can get their results for free. Some of these are government forecasts intended to be free, some are expert forecasts made during interviews or news media coverage, and some are professional forecasts whose highlights are released to the media as teasers to sell the more expensive research.
You can look for these forecasts in published news reports, on the Internet, in library reference materials, and in trade associations. Where yours might be found depends on your industry, and the exact nature of your business. Unfortunately nobody but you can pinpoint exactly where to look for your industry and your plan, but at least you can consider some examples.
For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly publishes job outlooks that include forecasts of the numbers of certain kinds of jobs into the future. If your Web plan needed to project growth in the number of accountants, or chief executives, or heavy machinery operators, for example, you could find that at the BLS site. You could also find a projection showing expected growth of computer industry jobs of 108 percent from 1996 to 2006, or growth in specific employee categories projected to 2006.
For example, in late Spring of 1999, a market research firm, named Datamonitor, published a study saying the Western European consumer online shopping market will be worth $775 million by the end of 1999, increasing to a total value of $8.6 billion by 2003. If your Web plan involves this market, you can use this as an expert forecast. The Internet reference is www.nua.ie/surveys.
For example, if you are working on a Web plan involving soft drinks you could go to the national soft drink association for a detailed five-year forecast of soft drink consumption.
For example, several major business magazines publish economic forecasts regularly. You could go into a reference library and use the Reader's Guide to find published data related to your data needs. Business Week magazine has a weekly column on business outlooks, and quarterly surveys of industry outlooks.
