Decision Support System - Essay Example

Companies, therefore, seek new profit opportunities suggested by them. They must plan innovations and purposely set out to capitalize on new approaches. Marketing is perceived as a means of adjusting to changes through altering such variables as products, services, prices, and channels of distribution to better meet changing environments. The change will be discussed in the chapters on the assessment of marketing opportunity and the product and service mix. Chapter 8, Nonlinear Optimization processes will help a manager to model the performance of the company and predict its development opportunities.

As an integral part of business, optimization is concerned with setting goals, establishing policies and programs, and implementing business action for the entire firm. Its major tasks are to translate consumer wants and needs, actual and potential, into profitable products and services that the company is capable of producing; to cultivate markets to support these products; and to program the distribution activities necessary to reach the markets. Chapter 16, Markov processes, will help a manager to evaluate the random samples and predict possible variations in the proposed management model.

  In reality, the conception of Markov processes as a viewpoint or as the fundamental purpose of a business focuses on the business as a satisfier of consumer wants and needs. This conception implies a top-management philosophy of business operation -- the marketing philosophy. Accordingly, customers and consumers become the core around which a business revolves, thus recognizing customer orientation on decision-making and problem-solving and the impact of marketing on other functional areas.

Chapters 2 and 3, Introduction to Linear programming and Linear programming sensitivity analysis, will help a manager to model different situations and select the best alternative. This technique of analysis is intended to provide an overview of the performance of the corporate. The ratios can be applied to the business to examine current achievements and trends. They can also be applied to competitors to enable external benchmarks' of performance to be established. Businesses realize that they cannot appeal to all consumer wants and needs, even for limited markets.

Thus they assess both corporate capabilities and goals (actual and potential) and market opportunities to seek areas of profitable intersection. It reflects an integrated and coordinated approach to the management of marketing activity and the development of total systems of business activities that recognize the market as the focal point of business. Essentially, the marketing philosophy is a way of thinking about the corporate activity; a frame of mind; an attitude. It recognizes the primacy of consumers and customers as they influence all business operations.

It starts with the company's chief executive, who must recognize that lacking markets for the company's products and lacking customer wants and needs.