Screening products for international markets: An expert systems application

Although expert systems have been developed for several marketing applications, few have been developed in the context of international marketing. In this paper, we present the results of our efforts to design and implement the prototype of ADAPTOR, an expert system which assists firms in international market entry decisions. Specifically, the system can assist U.S. multinational firms decide: (1) whether to enter the Indian market for consumer packaged goods; and, if so, (2) how to adapt the product for the Indian market. Knowledge for the system was acquired through in-depth interviews with country experts and product experts selected through well-defined criteria. The system has been implemented in a PC environment using a shell called VPEXPERT. We discuss our preliminary validation procedures, identify potential research contributions of this project, and discuss areas for future development.