Marketing Planning and Expert Systems: An Epistemology of Practice

Abstract

After nearly a quarter of a century, Artificial Intelligence, in spite of all its promise, has made virtually no progress in the domain of marketing, and whilst most interested parties view it as a potentially powerful way of beating the competition, there are few products and no on‐line systems available. This article explores why progress has been slow in the domain of marketing and describes the experience and progress of a group of major British multinational companies that have joined forces to produce an Expert Marketing Planning System, EXMAR, with the author of this article as principal expert. A number of conclusions are drawn, but one of the main ones is that the development of EXMAR shows that it is possible to use Expert System methodologies to build support systems in complex areas of marketing management, especially if the domain is well defined, has a large number of factors to be considered, and relevant expert knowledge is available. Also Expert Systems are shown as being useful in helping both academics and practitioners to structure, validate and use marketing knowledge and to understand better the interrelationships between the elements of marketing. In particular, the article forces managers to think deeply and in a structured way about the issues that need to be considered in developing a strategic marketing plan.

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