This book is about the role of expert systems in marketing, particularly
in the consumer goods industry. Section I describes the changing nature
of consumer marketing and presents the rationale and need for expert
systems. The remainder of the book combines a tutorial on expert systems
with a series of expert system prototypes. The tutorial material is
presented in three places. First, section II is devoted to introducing
expert systems in general. Chapter 3 provides a general introduction to
the topic, which is continued in chapter 4 where a small expert system
(the Promotion Advisor) is used to illustrate the important features of
a backward-chaining, rule-based system. The promotion theme is extended
in chapter 5 where a larger system is presented. The material in all
three of these chapters was designed as an introduction and tutorial on
the most common technology for building applied expert systems: the
backward-chaining, rule-based inference engine. Tutorial material is
also contained in the body of the chapters that describe the prototypes.
This material is usually in the form of sample rules and a description
of the process for applying the rules. The third location of the expert
system material is in chapters that follow discussions of the
prototypes. Chapter 7 is a technical chapter on the coupling of expert
systems to traditional systems.