Marketing decision support

Marketing decision support systems (MDSS) in companies. In a conceptual framework five categories of factors are distinguished that potentially affect adoption, use, and satisfaction: external environment factors, organizational factors, task environment factors, user factors and implementation factors. Hypotheses are developed and tested on data from a survey of 525 companies. The factors that determine the adoption of an MDSS are different from the factors that affect the success of an MDSS, once it has been installed. For adoption, support from inside the company, communication and knowledge about MDSS are crucial. For the subsequent success of an MDSS, involvement of the user, sophistication, adaptability of the system and the possibility of direct interaction with the system are important. MDSS are primarily adopted to obtain information and not to upgrade (add value to) existing information. Companies in consumer goods are ahead of companies in the business-to-business sector, but this difference is likely to decrease in the future.

Discusses the application of decision support systems (DSS) to assist in solving marketing decisions. As the marketing environment becomes more competitive the pressure to gain the “edge” over your competitors becomes more intense. Marketing decision support systems (MDSS) are valuable tools to assist in making marketing decisions to do just that! MDSS can be used to support, rather than replace, decision makers in the complex, semi or unstructured situations which are common in marketing problems. They incorporate the personal judgement and experience of the user to improve the effectiveness, rather than the efficiency of decision making. This means that managers will have more “quality” time to spend on analysis and planning for the future, rather than merely reflecting on the past.

Marketing decision makers are confronted with an increasing amount of information. This leads to a complex decision environment that may cause decision makers to lapse into using mental-effort-reducing heuristics such as anchoring and adjustment. In an experimental study, we find that the use of a marketing decision support system (MDSS) increases the effectiveness of marketing decision makers. An MDSS is effective because it assists its users in identifying the important decision variables and, subsequently, making better decisions based on those variables. Decision makers using an MDSS are also less susceptible to applying the anchoring and adjustment heuristic and, therefore, show more variation in their decisions in a dynamic environment. Low-analytical decision makers and decision makers operating under low time pressure especially benefit from using an MDSS.