Enhancing strategic market management with knowledge-based systems

Strategic market management (SMM) is an area of application for expert systems technology, and is characterized by mostly nonrecurring and ill-structured problems; expert systems are most effectively built to handle well-structured problems. The authors propose that it is useful to build an object-oriented expert system as a support system for SMM. The SMM context is formulated in detail, and complex interdependencies are examined to build adequate representations of the knowledge needed to support various parts of the SMM program. The support system allows the manager to simulate the interactions of various key parts of the SMM context, aids a manager in determining the implications and consequences of specific strategic decisions, and gives a manager a knowledge base that will explain the SMM context and how to work within it