TAPS: a knowledge support system for marketing budget sizing, allocation and targeting in retail banking and other industries

The authors describe the TAPS system for targeting and allocation of promotional spending and its sizing across products between media and aimed at different market segments. Since for large organizations like banks, pharmaceutical companies, etc., the marketing budget allocation is not made by one person but rather by a group of managers of varying degree of seniority and from different departments, the TAPS system has been structured to help in this group decision situation. It uses a combination of historical data, market research data, and the intuition and expert knowledge of a group of managers. The latter is extracted through their responding to a series of hypothetical `what-if´ spending scenarios. The TAPS system has been field-tested by a leading international bank and is currently in use. Some of the results obtained during the field test are described