A user-friendly marketing decision support system for the product line design using evolutionary algorithms

A marketing decision support system (MDSS) is presented. It has a user-friendly and easy to learn menu driven interface. Its purpose is to assist a marketing manager in designing a line of substitute products. Optimal product line design is a very important marketing decision. The MDSS uses three different optimization criteria. It examines different scenarios using the “What if analysis”. Also, it finds optimal solutions only for small sized problems using the complete enumeration method and near optimal solutions for real sized problems using evolutionary algorithms. The user is not forced to be familiar with the underlying models.