MAPS: an international market entry planning system

This paper describes an international marketing expert system that helps managers make strategic decisions regarding market entry. The system is called MAPS, for market-entry planning system. MAPS is being developed using a combination of AI knowledge representations (i.e. rules, semantic networks, text-analysis techniques) and multi-attribute decision models for judgment and evaluation. Previous research by the author and colleagues resulted in several components of MAPS, developed largely as stand-alone products. These components were developed using a shell called CEVAL (Candidate Evaluator). CEVAL is currently being used to integrate the components into a comprehensive system that addresses many major issues facing international market planners. This system serves both an educational purpose and a decision support purpose