Decision Support System

Decision Support System
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Decision Support System
The scope of the problem was basically concerning a new product that had been introduced in the market by the company. The company itself is in the retail sector and it sells childrenswear, menswear and womenswear. For sometime, the company’s management that comprises the marketing manager and the chief executive officer (CEO) who is also the business owner, wanted to diversify the company’s product range and start selling sports apparel including swimming, running and soccer apparel. Six months ago, the company introduced sportswear in its collection after a research revealed that the segment was not covered adequately and there was a commercial potential to exploit that segment. The management was hopping that there would be increased sales and hence, improved profitability. Five months after introducing sportswear apparel, the management realized that sales were below target. As such, the management’s decision problem was whether to: revise the target? withdraw the product? or revise some elements in the marketing mix? The people involved in the decision comprised the marketing manager and the chief executive officer of the company. Ultimately, they decided to revise the sales target downwards.
This real-world decision-making process compares to Simon’s phases. Simon’s decision-making model basically comprises 3 phases/steps: intelligence phase, design phase and choice phase. At the intelligence phase, the problem that calls for a decision is identified and formulated, and information regarding that particular problem is gathered. It is notable that this first phase might entail, for instance, comparing the present state of a process/project with its plan (Thakur, 2012). In the aforementioned real-world decision-making process, intelligence phase was when the problem was identified and formulated – the problem that the sales of the newly introduced product consisting of sport...