Increasing acceptance of managers for the use of marketing decision support systems

There have been many investigations into decision support systems and the range of benefits they can provide to an organisation. Despite the increased use of these systems in professional practice, there remains a lack of acceptance towards marketing decision models, with many managers resisting their full implementation. This paper presents results of a task designed to explore the extent to which decision models are understood. Although findings show low levels of understanding, it appears that relevant ability and skill can be learned. Educational programs could use the task to raise awareness of problems related to human misjudgment and to demonstrate to managers the usefulness of decision models as a tool to achieve superior performance.