“Soft” Information Systems for Marketing Decision Support

The article begins by defining three categories of information as soft; glosses on existing quantitative databases, text in the form of market reports and analyses, individual beliefs about markets and market behaviour before proceeding to review current text‐based information systems, based on commercially available databases. Focusing on information systems that elicit and represent structural relationships that would, for example, be familiar in terms of a diagrammatic consumer behaviour model, the article examines in turn, storage and database design; means of input and transfer of text, optical scanning; direct transfer from word processors, electronic publishing; access, interrogation, search and retrieval methods. The article concludes by providing an outline framework for an extended information system incorporating the tools, techniques and facilities described, highlighting the potential of such a system for learning, preprocessing and intelligent search.