Building models for marketing decisions: Past, present and future

We review five eras of model building in marketing, with special emphasis on the fourth and the fifth eras, the present and the future. At many firms managers now routinely use model-based results for marketing decisions. Given an increasing number of successful applications, the demand for models that are suitable in other contexts will accelerate. At the same time the development of innovative modeling approaches pushes the practical use of models in new areas. The latter is especially critical in an environment that changes rapidly. We propose a perspective on the "new marketing" and suggest some contributions models can make in the twenty-first century. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.