Knowledge-collector agents: Applying intelligent agents in marketing decisions with knowledge management approach

Marketing plays an essential role in the competitive business environment. Marketing decision makers constantly need to monitor changes in the environment and organization to make necessary changes. Therefore, a knowledge management (KM) system is required to acquire, store, retrieve and use up-to-date knowledge. Corporations also tend to look for systems to assist them in knowledge management. Agent technology looks set for assisting organizations in collecting, processing and using knowledge with high accuracy, speed and efficiency. This paper proposes a knowledge management framework for marketing decision making through using agent technology, fuzzy AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) and fuzzy logic. The fuzzy AHP is used for allocating the weight of determinant criteria and fuzzy logic is deployed for determining the final decision in pessimistic, moderate and optimistic satiations. The objectives of this study are as follows: (a) developing a knowledge management framework for capturing, storing, disseminating and utilizing marketing knowledge by using agent system, and (b) helping marketing decision makers to make effective decisions based on useful knowledge, and (c) encouraging marketing decisions towards the intelligence. Implementation of the proposed system in a car factory indicates that it is efficient and effective in supporting and improving marketing decision making.