FORECASTING DEMAND AT ANADOLU EFES
Efes Beverage Group is the beverage division of Anadolu Holding, one of Turkey’s leading conglomerates. Anadolu Holding was founded in 1969 and has principal interests
in the beverage, automotive, finance, restaurant chain management, and office supplies sectors. Efes Beverage Group produces and markets beer, malt, and soft drinks
across a geography that consists of Turkey, Russia, the CIS countries, Southeast Europe, and the Middle East. Anadolu Efes (or Efes in short) is the beer division
under the Efes Beverage Group (see http://www.anadoluefes.com).
As of 2006, Efes was one of the leaders of the beer industry in the region with its 16 breweries, 6 malt plants, and 1 hops processing facility in six countries. Efes
has a brewing capacity of 3.3 billion liters and a malt production capacity of 236,500 tons annually. Efes has a share of about 78% in the Turkish beer market.
As a part of their yearly planning efforts, Efes forecasts the monthly demand for the coming year during the fall of the current year. Historically, high-level sales
managers, based on input from their sales personnel, have done this forecasting mostly subjectively. Because they have been in the sector for a long time, their
estimates have been pretty accurate in the past. There have been cases where the estimates were off, but these were rare instances. In January 2014, they are
discussing how they could come up with a more formal way of forecasting. The Managing Director, Serdar Bölükbaşi, suggested to Levent Tomaç, the Vice President of
Marketing, that Efes could perform a study analyzing different inputs to its forecasting process. He explained that such a study would be useful to test their
intuitions on the factors they thought had a significant effect on beer demand. Levent agreed immediately. He explained that he had been thinking about this subject as
well, and he felt that they could still use their judgments after the formal analysis if they thought some aspects had been overlooked. They remembered the young
employee in the Logistics department, Selin Baydar, who recently did a great job studying the distribution of beer and the location of new breweries.
Selin was excited about her new assignment, because it would enable her to show off her business analytics skills. She wondered how she could go about building a
better forecasting model. She had not been much of a beer drinker, but having worked for Efes for four years, she had some ideas about what affects beer demand.
The vast majority of the population of Turkey practices the Muslim faith. Thus, Selin started by gathering some information about the holy month of Ramadan — see Table
1 below. (Ramadan is considered the most blessed month of the Islamic year and is linked to the lunar calendar. Many Muslims fast during the month of Ramadan. Those
who fast refrain from eating, drinking, and smoking during the day. At the end of Ramadan, a three-day feast starts when friends and relatives visit each other, and
candies, sweet pastries, and sweet liquors are served.)
Next, Selin gathered information about beer consumption in different countries — see Table 2 below.
Use these tables, outside sources, and your own experiences and judgment to help Selin move toward a better forecasting method.
QUESTIONS
1. What are some factors that might influence beer consumption in general? What about consumption in Turkey in particular? What about in the other countries
served by Efes?
2. Should Efes approach different countries/markets differently than it approaches the market in Turkey? Explain.
3. What type of forecasting approach does Efes use now? Do you see anything wrong with their approach? How might the approach be enhanced?
4. What additional data should Efes collect? Why?