MARKETING DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM:

Bridging gap between Managers and Information

SHREYA SAXENA 09916603912 GH-Batch (MBA General)

INTRODUCTION:
Marketing management is about finding different ways to satisfy customers wants and needs, while achieving organizational objectives and goals or requirements in terms of profit or some other measure of corporate performance. It brings together all customer-capturing resources, such as product design and specification, advertising and other forms of promotion, pricing policy, selling, channels of distribution and physical distribution to achieve this end. These customer- capturing resources are often summarized under four headings usually referred to as the four Ps of the marketing mix (i.e. price, promotion, place and product) where in additional 3 Ps can be again added (People, Processes ,Packaging). The art or science of marketing management is concerned with making decisions/policies with respect to all the elements of the marketing mix such that the company's interface with its markets is both profitable and customer satisfying. The managers require information to help them forecast changes in product demand, increase selling Productivity, and exercise control over sales and distribution expenses. Marketing is an ongoing process; decisions are made based n the information gained from the market and results of these decisions are measured based on companies growth and profits. Consumer and competitor reactions to the company's decisions are to be studied to ensure that the best strategy is being employed. Information on these matters is used to correct deviations from plans. For example, if a target of a 5 per cent increase in new clients has been set for the sales force then it is necessary to monitor how effective the sales force is in terms of reaching the target set. Such information can then be used to adjust targets, if the need arises. Therefore it can be stated that one of the essential reasons for business failure on the global market is certainly the lack of information about the target market. Actually, it is about inadequate understanding of global environment factors, caused by the corporate managements preoccupation with managing funds, materials, production technologies and labor. Raising the corporate managements level of knowledge of all relevant global environment factors is an imperative in the companys modern global marketing activities. In relation to this, one may

Information System Management

speak about a special type of management, the called as the marketing information management, relying on the acquisition and selection of objective information for the growth and need of the organisation. Possessing appropriate information and putting that knowledge to an appropriate use is becoming the main competitive challenge in doing business in the 21st century global market. Market information is the key element for designing an efficient marketing strategy for the national as well as for the global market besides being an inevitable part of business decision making processes. Company management expects reliable information that enables them to consider all the dimensions of the issue to be decided on. The required information may be based not only on the experience of and assessment by the relevant experts and executives from and outside the organisation, but also from the functioning of the global marketing decision support system. A global marketing decision support system can be understood as coordinated collection of data, systems, tools, skills and techniques with supporting software and hardware, by which a global corporation gathers and interprets relevant information about business operations and environment, and uses it further as the basis for overall global marketing actions. A global marketing decision support system also incorporates individual subsystems, whose coordinated action results in exchanges of opinions between the users and participants in the decision support system, as well as the global environment. Certain information may be gathered by possessing objective knowledge on an issue, which is, as a rule, acquired from others. In specialized marketing literature, such information is referred to as objective information (Jovi, 2006, p. 119). Apart from objective information, to create an appropriate marketing programme, company management also requires specific information which is mostly obtained through their own experience, and literature refers to these as experimental practical information (Jovi, 2006, p. 119). Also the successful companies in this environment will be those which can sell standardized products at lower prices in global markets (Levitt, 1983). Such a strategy requires a centrally

coordinated marketing team. It also implies the need for an instantaneous and transparent flow of information between points of sale and the decision makers and the sharing of expertise between decision-makers in different regional markets (Higgins et al. 1991). For this purpose Marketing

managers are more open to information technologies such as electronic data interchange (EDI), decision support systems, and advanced database systems, motivated by the need to remain competitive and the need to manage information resources (Carlyle, 1988).The combination of marketing information,

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computer technology and changing managerial consciousness for time and cost-effectiveness forms a dynamic system known as marketing decision support systems (MDSS) (Schmidt, 1993). The utilization of MDSS resources is crucial to the success of an organization and should be an integral part of the strategic planning process (Rockart and Morton, 1984). The typical marketing professional using marketing decision models is not readily understood by the formal mathematical models used by computer programs to calculate market response outcomes (Lilien and Rangaswamy 2003). Therefore the models themselves must be easy to understand in order to help managers understand the system and use the model as a decision making aid (Childe 1997).

The concept of an MDSS to process and supply information to marketing personnel has been extant for some time now (Cox and Good, 1967). The general system elements for any MDSS includes a data acquisition system, database management system, graphical and statistical analysis tools, model base, directories and retrieval systems (Barabba, 1983). However, these systems do little more than process information mechanically and presumably at considerable expense (Bessen, 1993; Schmidt, 1993). The large volumes of information implied by such systems do not serve management needs and only confuses potential users. Another study in fact showed that many organizations rely on their sales force for informal feedback rather than on their formal systems (Evans and Schlacter, 1985). The article cited the complexity of present systems as a factor in reducing their effectiveness.

There have been many investigations into decision support systems and the range of benefits they can provide to an organisation. Despite the increased use of these systems in professional practice, there remains a lack of acceptance towards marketing decision models, with many managers resisting their full implementation. The evidences almost uniformly indicate that the information being provided by the MDSS is highly complex in nature and hence needs to take care of so that it could be used in the best possible manner. Only a relative handful of studies(e.g. 2003, Danielle Stern, University of Wollongong; Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 7, No. 2. (May, 1970) have specifically examined whether the use of MDSS has been able to bridge the gap between the information and managers thereby increasing the acceptance among the managers for the use of MDSS. Although findings show low levels of understanding, it appears that relevant acceptance can be learned. Educational programs could use the task to raise awareness of problems related to MDSS and to

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demonstrate to managers the usefulness of decision systems as a tool to achieve superior performance thereby helping organizations perform better by making accurate use of information. This study attempts to contribute to the knowledge base by exploring the relationship status between the marketing manager across the globe and the marketing decision support system. This study examines the extent to which MDSS is understood by the managers and the recommendations to improve the same.

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REFERENCES:
1) Bessen, J. (1993), Riding the marketing information wave", Harvard Business Review, September/October, pp. 150-60. 2) Carlyle, R.E. (1988), "Managing information systems in multinationals", Datamation, March, pp. 5460. 3) Childe, S. J., 1997. An Introduction to Computer Aided Production Management. Chapman & Hall: Plymouth. 4) Cox, D.F, and Good, R.E. (1967), "How to build a marketing information system", Harvard Business Review, Vol. 45 No. 3. pp. 145-54. 5) David B. Montgomery; Glen L. Urban (May, 1970) Marketing Decision-Information Systems: An Emerging View Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 7, No. 2. pp. 226-234 6) Grubor A., (24 April 2009) Global Marketing Decision Support Systems, Management Information Systems,Vol. 4 (2009), No. 1, pp. 021-027 7) Higgins, L.F.,McIntyre, S.C. and Raine, C.G. (1991), "Design of Global Marketing Information Systems", Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Summer-Autumn, pp. 49-58. 8) Jovi, M. (2006), Meunarodni marketing [International Marketing], Belgrade, IntermaNet 9) Kotler, Ph. (1971): Marketing Decision Making: A Model Building Approach. Holt.Rinehart and Winston, New York. 10) Lilien, G. L. and Rangaswamy, A., 2003. Marketing Engineering: Computer Assisted Marketing Analysis and Planning. Prentice Hall: New Jersey. 11) Proctor R.A.: (1991) Marketing Information systems Source Management Decision, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 55-60. 12) Stern, D. (2003). Increasing acceptance of managers for the use of marketing decision support systems. In R. Kennedy (Eds.),Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference (pp. 2373-2379)

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