Noel Capon

Decision Systems Analysis in Industrial Marketing

Coauthor(s): James Hulbert.

Abstract:
With so many mathematically bowdlerized, and computerized, versions of the application of systems analysis abroad it is a pleasure to welcome this purely descriptive account of the application of decision system analysis (DSA) to four marketing decision systems. Professors Capon and Hulbert describe the application of DSA to pricing, forecasting, advertising, and new product development that they carried out with the cooperation of a large, multinational, British firm specialized in the marketing of processed raw materials to secondary processors. From their experience the authors conclude that the application of DSA to key marketing decisions yielded considerable insight into the problems faced by the company; and that the majority of problems identified were amenable to managerial solutions without formal information system development. DSA is recommended as a means of auditing marketing activity but the reader is warned that DSA can be labour intensive and expensive if there is a tendency to seek too much unnecessary detail.

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