Corporate Models: Better Marketing Plans

Marketing is so dependent on human judgment, so involved with complex relationships, and so beset with imperfect knowledge that decisions are all too often made by sheer intuition rather than rational analysis. Of course, experience and intuition are vital ingredients in marketing, but their value can be greatly enhanced by objective measurement of market forces. In this article, the author shows how a company can analyze its marketing system step by step, express various relationships explicitly in a model, and then simulate alternative plans on the computer. This process will help a decision maker increase his understanding of a complex operation and evaluate the financial implications of a proposed marketing plan.