Research Paper on:
Projecting Results of Gap Inc.

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
on the way that sales are made. In this paper Gap Inc. will be considered in terms of their performance. The way that this can be undertaken involves forecasting and  the use of historical trends. Sales performance many be linked to a range of factors, one of which is the consumer price index. The use of these historical figures can  be used to indicate the way that the economy may move, this can then be applied to the performance of GAP itself. The use of historical data may also be  used to project forward in terms of regression analysis. Looking at GAP the first stage is to use the annualised consumer price index figures and use these to project  forward for 2003 and 2004 using regression analysis, this gives us the following. (Figures for current and past CPI taken from Economagic, 2003) 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001  2002 2003 2004 CPI (annualised) 1.697 1.607 2.676 3.436 1.546 2.425 2.653 2.649 Now that the retail price index has been forecast using regression analysis this can then be  applied to the gap trading figures. Here the figures will be taken and then increased by the level of increase predicted in the consumer price index. The latest annual report  that is available is the 2001 annual report, which was published at the end for February 2002. Therefore, in undertaking the projection we can look at what we would expect  the 2002 figure to be and then consider what the indications are in the quarterly reporting. Using the factors above the -projections would come out as this; 2001 2002  2003 2004 Net Sales 13,847,873 14,183,684 14,559,977 14,945,671 However, in looking at the quarterly result it appears that this has been out performed and that there is an aggressive growth