Abstract:

Informatics and integrated data processing are foremost in the minds of company managers who want to keep on making their decisions in a quickly changing business world. The use of the electronic computer has added a new dimension to the possibilities of analysing and processing the information which the company has at its disposal. However, although the technical possibilities available to the company manager are vast, only very little use is actually made in Europe of these possibilities and particularly in marketing this field has been insufficiently explored. The aim of this paper will be to survey the present situation and to make an assessment of the future prospects for the use of electronic computers in marketing: - the first part will deal with the informatics tools which to our knowledge are now constantly used to solve marketing problems; - the second part will deal with the development prospects for these tools and with the problems which have to be overcome before arriving at an integrated system of "commercial management".