A Marketing Decision Support System for Retailers

A decision support system for planning marketing strategies and allocating resources for a multi-store retailer is described. This decision support system combines well-known model building and analysis methodology, sophisticated computer software, and attention to management's implementation needs in order to apply management science thinking to messy, high level strategy and forecasting problems. The system consists of a planning model, national campaign evaluation system, experimental analysis system, and an ongoing interactive data base and reporting system. The planning model was first implemented with subjective judgment as input. The rest of the system was then refined to aid management in improving their subjective judgments, and for tracking and control. The marketing mix for total and business entity (groups of departments) sales is presently being planned with the support of this system. Profit improvements have been identified and implemented.