Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185 } 203

Applications of arti"cial neural networks in management science:

a survey
Karl A. Krycha*, Udo Wagner
UniversitaK t Wien, Institut f uK r Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Lehrstuhl fuK r Marketing, A-1210 Wien, BruK nnerstra}e 72, Austria

Abstract

An increasing number of publications reporting on applications of Arti"cial Neural Networks demonstrates the growing relevance
of modeling techniques summarized under this heading. In Management Science several known problems also have already been
solved by using one of these methods.
The paper at hand provides a survey of the most recent publications in this "eld and employs the functional structuring of
Management for presentation. In the spirit of a metaanalysis we try to identify regularities with respect to the methods used and the
results achieved. Furthermore we formulate areas for future research and give a summarizing evaluation of the state-of-the-art.
 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Arti"cial neural networks; Adaptive modeling; Management science

1. Introduction The presentation is aimed at the reader who is interest-

1.1. Aim of the survey
Recent years have seen a substantial increase of
interest in the topic of Arti"cial Neural Networks
(ANN). Whereas these systems have been heavily used
in the "eld of computer science, in particular in Japan,
for quite some time their applications in other areas
are not that wide spread. This is probably due to the
fact that the superiority of this methodology over
established tools of analysis is not commonly agreed
upon. The paper at hand probes into this issue from
a management science perspective. Our goal is to
give a survey of the most recent publications in this
"eld and further to evaluate the potential impact of
ANN on decision making in business administration. By
providing a state-of-the-art review and by identifying
consistent "ndings we want to improve the knowledge on
appropriate applications of ANN in management
science.
* Corresponding author.
ed in the analysis of data on business matters, in parti-
cular in the area of marketing, "nance and production,
and who has an elementary familiarity with ANN since
mathematical perspectives are minimized throughout
this paper.
1.2. Organization of the survey
The survey is organized as follows. We start by provid-
ing some basic terminology of ANN and brie#y intro-
duce attributes of ANN we regard as important for
characterization purposes; these features will be em-
ployed later. Subsequently we focus on the criteria used
in selecting the papers discussed in the sequel. The next
sections deal with the actual state-of-the-art survey on
ANN. The functional structuring of management serves
as a guideline for presentation, i.e., we provide an over-
view with respect to marketing, "nance and production.
Additionaly we try to detect regularities which persist
over several of the reported applications. Furthermore,
ANN are compared with more traditional statistical
methods, e.g., regression and discriminant analysis, in
terms of "tting, prediction and interpretability of the
results. We identify areas of future research in order to

0969-6989/99/$ - see front matter  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 9 - 6 9 8 9 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 0 6 - X
186 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
make ANN more easily applicable to the management
scientist as well as comparable with each other. A sum-
mary concludes the paper.
1.3. Fundamentals about ANN
Originally the design of ANN was motivated by con-
sidering an abstraction of the neural architecture of the
human brain. First attempts to use the underlying the-
ories for computational purposes came as early as in
1943 (McCulloch and Pitts, 1943). The work of Hebb
(Hebbian learning theory, Hebb, 1949) speci"cally ad-
dressed the question of how the human brain's neurons
facilitate learning. Rosenblatt introduced the perceptron
in 1958 (Rosenblatt, 1958), and the "rst successful ap-
plications of ANN were developed by Widrow and Ho!
in the 1960s (Widrow and Ho!, 1960). Paul Werbos
(Werbos, 1974) proposed reverse error assignments for
the Widrow}Ho! procedure, thus eliminating the earlier
single-layer constraint, which severely restricted the pro-
cesses which could be computed (see Lacher et al., 1995).
Further improvements were largely inspired by the
superposition theorem of Kolmogorov (1957); this shows
that any continuous function can be computed by using
linear summations combined with a nonlinear, continu-
ously increasing function of one variable (this property
was proved by Hornik et al. (1989)).
With the publication of the so called backpropagation
algorithm by Rumelhart et al. (1986) the interest of the
research community in neural networks has been increas-
ing up to this day. Although work continued throughout
it received relatively little attention until the last several
years, during which a growing interest in this kind of
adaptive modeling technique has emerged. Some reasons
for this fact may be found in the availability of faster
computing facilities, the development of parallel comput-
ing architectures, a better documentation of ANN-
related theory, and the increasing number of successful
real-world implementations.
A neural network consists of a set of computational
units (cells or neurons) and a set of one-way data connec-
tions joining these units. These are represented graph
theoretically as directed arcs and each of it has a numer-
ical weight that speci"es its in#uence on succeeding cells.
A subset of cells is treated as network inputs that are set
externally and do not recompute their outputs (Gallant,
1993). Although the details of the proposed network
architectures vary, each such processing unit may be
characterized by its activity level, an output value, a set of
input connections, a bias value, and a set of output
connections. The total set of weights of the net (synaptic
strengths) determines the e!ects of the incoming input on
the net-output. The e!ect of a particular unit's output on
the activity of another unit is jointly determined by its
output level and the strength of its connection to the
latter unit (Rumelhart et al., 1994a).
2. Reported applications of arti5cial neural networks
2.1. Scheme for reporting results of ANN
At present there are probably about 30 di!erent fami-
lies of ANN being used in research and/or applications as
a whole, where we "nd four basic classes in common use
(Fischer et al., 1996): Adaptive resonance theory models
(ART), multilayer perceptrons (MLP), also termed
multilayer feedforward networks, recurrent associative
networks, and self-organizing maps (SOM). A good intro-
duction to the basic concepts and ideas of neural network
computing can be found, e.g., in Hertz et al. (1991),
Gallant (1993), Rumelhart et al. (1994a), and Patterson
(1996).
This diversity makes it very di$cult to evaluate alter-
native ANN, the more since up to now no standard
reporting scheme has emerged. In fact we feel that a ma-
jor contribution of the paper at hand is the design of
a way to compare di!erent procedures in this "eld. In the
sequel we describe measures deemed relevant for this
purpose. They will be used for presentation in Tables
2}4. In particular we propose to describe ANN along the
dimensions &&architecture'', &&learning'', and &&algorithmic
details'' and to evaluate their performances with respect
to some validation measures as well as by contrast with
traditional statistical methods. These dimensions are ca-
pable of describing important features of ANN and have
been, more or less regularily, reported in the relevant
literature (see, e.g., Hertz et al. (1994) for a more detailed
description). In view of the results reported later we
distinguish between the following attributes:
E Architecture of the ANN
topology used, i.e.,
BM: Boltzmann machine,
MLP: multilayer perceptron,
number of layers, i.e.,
input layer,
hidden layer(s),
output layer,
number of neurons in each layer,
use of bias nodes.
The following notation is used in Tables 2}4. After an
acronym indicating the general ANN-topology, the num-
ber of nodes starting with the input layer is given. Each
layer is separated by a &&-''. If several architectures have
been tested, this is indicated by brackets around the
varied number of nodes in the respective layer separated
by a &&,''. If a bias node is used, we indicated this by
adding brackets to the layer receiving its input (separated
by a &&#''). Therefore, a MLP 15-(5,7,9)-5(#1)-1 would
indicate simulations with three di!erent multilayer per-
ceptrons with 15 input nodes, "ve, seven and nine nodes
in the "rst hidden layer, "ve nodes in the second hidden
layer receiving an additional bias input signal, and one
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203 187

single node in the output layer. For the Boltzmann ma- E Traditional method:
chine we separated input, hidden, and output units by DA: discriminant analysis,
slashes (in this order). kNN: k-nearest neighbor (clustering) approach,
LR: logistic regression,
E Learning MCI: multiple competitive interaction model,
learning rule, i.e., MDA: multiple discriminant analysis,
BP: backpropagation, MDM: Mahalanobis distance measure (clustering)
Cascor: cascade correlation, approach,
CPN: counterpropagation network, MRA: multiple regression analysis,
GRGx: generalized gradient method, NBD: negative binomial model,
SA: simulated annealing, RA: regression analysis.
(In cases where enhancements to the indicated
learning rule have been proposed we add a stroke, 2.2. Criteria used in selecting the papers
e.g., BP.)
learning rate g, If we take a closer look at real-world ANN applica-
momentum a, tions we may roughly divide them into the following
stopping criteria d, categories (see Rumelhart et al., 1994a; Rittinghaus-
(For some papers we found it very di$cult to ident- Mayer, 1993): pattern classi,cation (e.g., machine-printed
ify the criteria actually used. Therefore we present character recognition, hand-written character recogni-
exactly the same information as given by the tion), control and optimization (comprising mostly ap-
authors.) plications in engineering, e.g., petroleum exploration,
number of learning patterns l, chemical process control, continuous-casting control
number of holdout patterns h. during steel production) and applications in business and
E Algorithmic details management (e.g., airline security control, investment
transfer function F, i.e., management and risk control, prediction of the stock
linear, price index, credit card fraud detection, "nancial fore-
logistic, casting and portfolio management, loan approval, target
sigmoid, marketing, airline seating allocation).
tangent hyperbolic, Table 1 gives a survey of papers published within the
number of learning cycles/iterations , last few years relevant for management scientists interest-
initial weights I. ed in ANN modeling. We apply a classi"cation by busi-
We observed several di!erent validation criteria used ness disciplines and arrive at a subdivision into the areas
to evaluate ANN-applications and subsumed it under of marketing, ,nance, production, and a remainder class
a column titled &&Val.'' in Tables 2}4 but we restrict our titled Reviews/Methodology. Into this group we categor-
presentation to familiar statistics, as it is beyond the ize all articles of reviewing character or studies with
scope of this article to report on rather untypical criteria a methodical orientation. Nevertheless, all reports cited
or amendments to existing ones. We include also a col- in Table 1 have at least some relation to management
umn under the heading of &&Trad. m.'' to indicate the science, whereas publications with a purely technical
applied traditional methods used to compute bench- background (i.e., concentrating solely on computational
marks. As far as possible we try to use one of the follow- aspects, network architectures, analysis of numerical per-
ing abbreviations in these two columns: formance, etc.) have not been considered. We restrict our
report to German and English reviews, surveys and liter-
E Validation: ature searches published from 1990 until April 1996 and
AIC: Akaike information criterion, "nd 25 publications in marketing, 23 in "nance, 23 in
a: alpha error of misclassi"cation, production and 24 publications in the reviews/methodo-
b: beta error of misclassi"cation, logy group.
s: chi-square test-statistic, In 1991 Hruschka (1991) identi"ed in his article
MAD: mean absolute deviation, a scarcity of studies applying ANN to marketing-relevant
MAE: maximal absolute error, data-analysis problems. This situation has dramatically
MAPE: mean absolute percentage error, changed since then. Interest in neural nets in the Man-
MRD: mean relative deviation, agement Science/Operations Research community in
MSE: mean squared error, general is evident from the growing number of papers
R: coe$cient of determination, dealing with neural nets. Sharda in his outstanding bibli-
RMSE: root mean squared error, ography counts only 10 papers at the fall 1990 joint
SSE: sum of squared error, national meeting of the Operations Research Society of
U: Theil's inequality coe$cient. America (ORSA) and the Institute of Management
 188

Table 1
Survey of papers reporting applications of ANN to management science problems
K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203

Note: Under the right-hand-side column we categorized papers with a stronger methodical background (indicated by an &m') as well as reviews, surveys and literature searches (indicated
by an &r').
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
Sciences (TIMS). This number grew to 27 papers at the
spring 1991 TIMS/ORSA meeting, and the spring 1992
meeting already included 45 papers (Sharda, 1994). The
number of publications increased further, and in Table 1
we select 95 papers for documentation published within
the last 5 years.

In order to provide some insight into the broad variety
of the issues tackled by these numerous articles we dis-
cuss the results according to the functional structuring of
management separately. On one hand we present
summary tables which try to evaluate the di!erent ap-
plications of ANN along the dimensions outlined in
Section 2.1; when compared with Table 1 all those stud-
ies are missing for which only a few attributes have been
reported. On the other hand we pinpoint at the diversity
of management problems analyzed by verbally describ-
ing them. We focus mainly on papers showing a rather
comprehensive documentation and concentrate on at-
tributes which appear to be relevant to the majority of
authors reporting on ANN-techniques. In cases where we
encountered additional information important to char-
acterize the applied model(s), we elaborate on this in the
form of remarks.
2.3. ANN applied within the xeld of marketing
ANN can be applied to many marketing decision-
making problems which could be tackled previously by
multivariate statistical analysis only. Typical problems
turn out to be market segmentation tasks and more domi-
nantly market response modeling. Nearly all cited papers
explicitly compare ANN-approaches to traditional
methods including primarily discriminant analysis for
classi"cation tasks and estimations of market response
functions by multiple regression analysis. The most cru-
cial point for research activities in the "eld of marketing
is the lack of applications on the individual level data.
These kinds of problems are encountered in the context
of purchase decision modeling and should lead to ANN-
representations of purchase behavior in the tradition of
stochastic models of consumer behavior (Wagner and
Taudes, 1986, 1987; Decker et al., 1995).
As rather typical applications of ANN for market re-
sponse modeling we elaborate on Gruca et al. (1995), van
Wezel and Baets (1995), and Dasgupta et al. (1994). In their
paper Gruca et al. (1995) attempt to formulate ANN-
models of aggregate market response and "t them to scan-
ner data. Speci"cally, panel data for the American co!ee
and ketchup market is used to compare the performance
against two di!erent forms of the multiplicative competitive
interaction model (MCI). The authors do not con"rm su-
periority of ANN-approaches in every case studied.
van Wezel and Baets (1995) build ANN-models to
predict market response and compare them to a linear
and to a multiplicative model "tted to the data by mul-
tiple linear regression. The ANN used di!ered in their
189
architecture as to how they modeled di!erent brands
(separately or simultaneously for all brands in one
model). Overall, a better performance of the ANN is
reported.
The study by Dasgupta et al. (1994) compares the
performance of discriminant analysis and logistic regres-
sion to that of backpropagation ANN-models. The com-
parative performances of these models are evaluated with
respect to their ability to identify consumers based upon
their willingness to take "nancial risks and to purchase
a non-traditional investment product. The empirical
analysis is conducted using two di!erent real-world
individual level cross-sectional data sets related to the
marketing of "nancial services. It is found that the ANN-
model performs better than the other two models (Das-
gupta et al., 1994).
A very interesting study by Mazanec uses ANN-
methods for exploratory investigations combining
a priori and a posteriori information for a simultaneous
consideration of both segmentation approaches. The esti-
mated network shows a classi"cation accuracy slightly
better than discriminant analysis, but at the same time
this model gives a good interpretation of the postulated
interrelations (Mazanec, 1993).
Stochastic modeling of consumer behavior on the indi-
vidual level of data is treated, to our knowledge, only by
Heimel (1994), Gaul et al. (1994) and to some extent by
Dasgupta et al. (1994). Heimel investigates panel data of
about 2 000 households reporting on washing powder
buying. The empirical data set comprises individual level
information of purchase behavior (time of purchase,
brand bought, price paid, and quantity bought) as well as
of sociodemographic variables characterizing the indi-
vidual households. His approach is to construct
ANN-models for several di!erent aspects of consumer
behavior, namely purchase incidence, brand choice and
purchase quantity selection. In the course of estimation,
several di!erent network architectures are trained for
each type of consumer decision using external variables
as descriptors. Purchase incidence nets are validated by
comparing their performance to the NBD-model, brand
choice nets to a logit-model, and purchase quantity nets
to a cumulative logit-model, respectively. As a conclusion
a good "t by ANN in each of the considered cases can be
supported. Each traditional approach can be represented
by the same type of ANN and it is easily possible to
include additional descriptors if necessary.
A number of papers focus on expert systems (ES) as
possible applications of arti"cial intelligence in market-
ing. Most of these applications use rule-based ES as
decision-support instruments for marketing problems.
A good overview to conventional ES in marketing can be
found in Decker and Gaul (1990). Rule-based ES are
satisfactorily used in well-de"ned problem domains
(Hruschka, 1991) whereas a strong note of caution is
articulated by a number of authors, who point out the
190 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203

Table 2
Applications in marketing (for a description of the abbreviations used see Section 2.1)
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203 191

Table 2. (continued)
(a)
192 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203

Table 2. (continued)

Table 2. (continued)
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
weaknesses of the approach and criticize the often
overoptimistic attitudes of expert system developers. The
main problems of conventional ES are located on three
di!erent levels of complexity: on a technical level di$cul-
ties in constructing and debugging the knowledge base of
ES have to be dealt with; on a general methodological
level it is found that the applicability of ES decreases in
accordance with the degree of structure inherent to the
considered domain; on a rather case-speci"c level ES per-
form quite poorly, e.g., compared to pattern recognition.
The ANN-approach is linked in formal and practical
terms with expert systems (Curry and Moutinho, 1993).
Furthermore, this kind of representation seems better
suited for more numerical or statistical tasks (Gallant,
1993). Malakooti and Zhou present an adaptive feedfor-
ward ANN-approach to solve discrete multiple criteria
decision-making problems. It is used to capture and
represent the preferences and then to select the most
desirable alternative. The network can adjust and im-
prove their representation as more information from the
decision maker becomes available. It is used to rank the
set of discrete alternatives where each alternative is asso-
ciated with a set of con#icting and noncommensurate
criteria (Malakooti and Zhou, 1994). Antweiler uses a
backpropagation-based ANN as connectionistic ES and
applied it to decision-making in economic policy making
(Antweiler, 1991). Chu and Widjaja (1994) illustrate the
use of a backpropagation-based ANN-approach for se-
lecting appropriate forecasting methods.
2.4. ANN applied within the xeld of xnance
The essential topics in "nance are forecasts of changes
in the value of "nancial assets under the form of stocks,
indices and currencies (i.e., forecasting), and analysis of
strength of historical (or pro forma) "nancial statements
(i.e., classi,cation). We found a clear focus on classi"ca-
tion tasks in the form of studies evaluating balance sheet
data using ANN. Some of the more recent applications in
"nance will be brie#y presented here.
A non-parametric method for estimating the pricing
formula of a derivative asset that uses ANN is proposed
by Hutchinson et al. (1994). To assess the potential value
of network pricing formulas they simulate Black-Scholes
option prices. It is shown that learning networks can
recover the Black-Scholes formula from a two-year train-
ing set of daily option prices, and that the resulting
network formula can be used successfully to hedge op-
tions out-of-sample. Although not a substitute for the
more traditional arbitrage-based pricing formulas, net-
work-pricing procedures may be more accurate and
computationally more e$cient alternatives when the
underlying asset's price dynamics are unknown, or when
the pricing equation associated with the no-arbitrage
condition cannot be solved analytically (Hutchinson
et al., 1994).
193
Financial statements contain so called noisy data
and therefore present a challenge to applying quantitat-
ive models. Lacher et al. (1995) apply an ANN to esti-
mate the future "scal health of a company. The com-
monly used tool in accounting and "nance for such
classi"cations and for predictions is a multiple dis-
criminant analysis of "nancial ratios. However, the mul-
tiple discriminant analysis technique has limitations
based on its assumptions of linear separability, multivari-
ate normality, and non-collinearity of the predictor vari-
ables. The Cascor architecture network is employed by
the authors and is reported to be a more robust approach
than the multiple discriminant analysis (Lacher et al.,
1995).
In their paper Baetge et al. (1995) investigate 610
medium-size companies regarding the need to undertake
tax audits. They analyze their "nancial statements by 62
selected balance sheet ratios and compare several ANN-
models with results obtained by a multiple linear dis-
criminant analysis. A CPN architecture with four layers
is trained by three di!erent methods. The evaluation of
di!erent models is performed by comparing ratios of
correct classi"cations (Baetge et al., 1995).
In a very similar manner Baetge and Krause (1993)
compare multiple discriminant analysis with backpropa-
gation networks to analyse 6 667 "nancial statements of
solvent and insolvent companies. As a result of this study,
backpropagation networks are found to be a better
means of classi"cation than the multiple discriminant
analysis in the case of credit investigation.
A study of Lenard et al. (1995) uses two di!erent ANN
approaches as well as a logit model to predict which "rms
would receive audit reports re#ecting a going concern
uncertainty modi"cation. The decision to issue a going
concern opinion is an unstructured task that requires the
use of the auditor's judgement. In cases where human
judgement is required, the auditor may bene"t from the
use of statistical analysis or other forms of decision mod-
els to support the "nal decision. The highest prediction
accuracy is achieved by an ANN-formulation; the
authors propose it as a robust alternative model for
auditors to support their assessment of going concern
uncertainty a!ecting the client company.
Kryzanowski and Galler (1995) present an application
using the learning algorithm of the Boltzmann machine,
which employs simulated annealing as an optimization
technique to classify "nancial statements. They run vari-
ous experiments using balanced training sets and (un-)
balanced test sets. A Boltzmann machine with two- and
three-class output separation reveals better accuracy as
the size of the training sample increases in a balanced
fashion, and less accuracy as the test set is augmented in
an unbalanced manner. The ANN-approach seems to
have practical value for this kind of problems. A very
similar application for bankruptcy prediction using
ANN is presented by Wilson and Sharda (1994).
194 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203

2.5. ANN applied within the xeld of production tion problems. As quality control problems correspond
to classi"cation, the appropriateness of ANN-appro-
Forecasting (production costs, delivery dates, etc.), aches is supposed to be as good as in the respective
quality control and optimization predominate in produc- studies in the "elds of marketing and "nance. Similar to

Table 3
Applications in "nance (for a description of the abbreviations used see Section 2.1)
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203 195

Table 3. (continued)
(a)

classi"cation, forecasting problems are also encountered senger tra$c ANN appear to enhance the forecasting
in marketing and "nance. The potential of using ANN as accuracy. In contrast we have found only in production
a forecasting technique is examined, e.g., by Nam and applications of ANN dealing with optimization which can
Schaefer (1995). In predicting international airline pas- be performed by some special ANN architectures.
196 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
Zwietering et al. (1991) show that ANN are suitable for
problems in production planing, particularily to solve the
dynamic lotsizing problem. They investigate both the
"nite horizon and the rolling horizon case using 1000
uniformly distributed random demand quantities. They
compare the ANN with the Wagner-Within algorithm in
the "nite horizon case (10 planning intervals) and with
a shifting Silver-Meal heuristic in the rolling horizon case
(12 planning intervals). The authors demonstrate that
a properly designed and trained multilayered perceptron
outperforms the traditional algorithms and that the Sil-
ver-Meal heuristic may be perfectly represented by
a single-layer feedforward ANN with backpropagation
learning rule.
May investigates the job shop scheduling problem for
a manufacturing system with a single machine and ten
di!erent types of jobs. As the example assumes a machine
queue containing "ve di!erent jobs at a time, 252 di!er-
ent combinations of jobs in this queue are possible. The
ANN undertakes the scheduling compared with the opti-
mal solution computed by the Johnson algorithm as well
as to a heuristic solution established by the shortest
Table 3. (continued)
(b)
processing time (SPT) priority rule. The author uses
a two-layered feedforward perceptron and experiments
with di!erent numbers of units in the hidden layer. As
a main result he reports the ability of this architecture to
reproduce exactly the results of the Johnson algorithm
(May, 1996).
An ANN-application for real option valuation is pre-
sented by Taudes et al. (1996). A production facility
is evaluated with respect to several di!erent operation
options. Options for such a facility are the time of invest-
ment, abandoning of the project for salvage value,
temporary shut down of the production, and various
input/output adaptations to react to changes in the re-
spective markets. The value of an option is given by
a function of a time index and an operations mode. If it is
prefered to alter the production mode (i.e., to adopt the
output to changes in the demand) switching costs are
considered. The values of the training- and the holdout-
sample are taken from arti"cially generated payo!
series. A two-layer feedforward ANN with simulated
annealing training scheme is used as a replacement for
dynamic programming to determine the value of certain
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
Table 3. (continued)
(c)
production programs of a #exible manufacturing system
for di!erent parameter constellations.
2.6. Discussion
2.6.1. Evaluation of patterns found in the documented
applications
By looking at Tables 2}4 the diversity in this
"eld becomes obvious again. Nevertheless we try to
identify some regularities which seem to emerge. The
discussion is organized along the dimensions introduced
in Section 2.1.
2.6.1.1. Architecture of the ANN. Most of the papers pro-
pose the feedforward MLP-topology as counterpart to
traditional methods. We note a tendency towards estima-
ting simpler networks in more recent applications. Sim-
ilarly the inclusion of a bias term seems to be found more
often in older studies. The standard ANN in the research
community has become the three-layered MLP. This
197
might be justi"ed by the powerful characterization of
ANN by means of the superposition theorem of Kol-
mogorov. It is common practice, however, not to refer to
theoretical results but to rely on the approximation capa-
bilities of this kind of net and put not that much e!ort in
experimenting with the number of layers and the number
of nodes. The ANN is most often used as model capable
of processing all information available in a particular
problem situation. There is a high reluctancy to apply
other approaches; quite seldom we found applications
using SOM (self organizing maps, not included in Tables
2}4) and BM.
2.6.1.2. Learning. In a similar vein network learning
rules are clearly dominated by the backpropagation al-
gorithm. Older studies are more likely to adopt BP or to
explore details on how learning takes place for the par-
ticular case. More recent articles seem to take BP as
self-containing standard and do not further elaborate on
this aspect. Simulated annealing is applied only twice, we
found also two examples for a GRGx training and one
case of CPN-learning.
198 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203

Table 4
Applications in production (for a description of the abbreviations used see Section 2.1)

Table 4. (continued)
(a)
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
If we take a closer look at the parameters subsumed
under this heading we are not able to discover regulari-
ties. One exception might be the momentum parameter
a which is choosen between 0.8 and 0.9 in the majority of
the cases; moreover it is usually larger than the learning
rate g (probably the default values of the software pack-
age employed are taken). Studies which are more sophisti-
cated with respect to this point utilize a separate data set
for parameter optimization. Regardless of the claim of
many authors that parameter tuning has been undertaken,
we did not "nd any paper clearly reporting this process.
The stopping criteria is ignored by most of the studies.
Despite the broad consensus that the main problem of
ANN-learning is to "nd an optimal trade-o! between
over"tting and generalization capability, systematic ap-
proaches are documented, if at all, only in very rudimen-
tary form.
The use of two di!erent sets of data for training and
validation of ANN has become the commonly accepted
standard in all (but one) considered papers. The ratio of
learning samples to holdout samples is di!ering very
strongly and re#ects mainly the quality and extent of
data available in the particular situation. In terms of
classi"cation accuracy, balanced training sets are often
reported to result in &&better'' ANN solutions.
2.6.1.3. Algorithmic details. The use of the sigmoid
transfer function seems to be the rule in the more recent
papers. Similarly to the stopping criteria the relevance of
this information is frequently ignored by the authors.
Initial weights are reported in only 8 out of 39 cases
(21%).
As a recapitulation the main "nding persists in a pre-
dominant usage of a three-layered feedforward net in
combination with the backpropagation training algo-
rithm (BP, see Rumelhart et al., 1986) or slightly adopted
versions of the backpropagation training algorithm
(BP). In Table 5 we give a condensed overview of the use
of this ANN relative to the total amount of networks
considered in Tables 2}4.
2.6.2. ANN as alternative to traditional statistical methods
As a result of our survey we found a majority of papers
proposing ANN as substitutes for multivariate statistical
approaches and evaluating their performance in com-
parision with traditional approaches. For the most part
the classi"cation accuracy tested in a holdout sample is
used as validation criterion; some authors elaborate on
this by computing a- and b-errors or s-statistics.
It was pointed out already previously that from
a problem oriented point of view ANN are mainly en-
countered when dealing with tasks in the area of classi-
"cation, forecasting and optimization. We make use of
this fact for structuring our discussion in the sequel.
199
2.6.2.1. Classixcation. Classi"cation problems are re-
ported to be applications of ANN most frequently. Their
potential for segmentation has been explored vis-a-vis
econometric models (i.e., discriminant analysis, regres-
sion analysis and logistic regression) or nonparametric
methods (i.e., cluster analysis } kNN, MDM). On the
whole there is some evidence for the superiority of ANN
within this domain.
(i) Discriminant analysis: Various researchers (Tam and
Kiang, 1992; Baetge et al., 1995; Lacher et al., 1995)
have compared the predictive power of ANN with
that of conventional discriminant analysis. All these
experiments concluded that ANN perform better
than conventional discriminant analysis.
(ii) Multivariate regression analysis: The advantages of
neural nets compared to multivariate regression anal-
ysis are at least twofold: A wider range of applicabil-
ity is achieved through simultaneous consideration of
several dependent variables and secondly a high de-
gree of fault tolerance may be attained. When mul-
tiple factors are to be predicted, statistical analyses
such as canonical correlation o!er an alternative. But
it is burdensome to interpret the results of such an
analysis and the methodology does not lend itself
readily to prediction making.
2.6.2.2. Forecasting. The predictive capability of ANN
has been studied by a number of researchers, but again
many of the papers in this area use discriminant analysis
or regression analysis to predict class membership, e.g.,
by de"ning classes of increasing vs. decreasing stock
market indexes. In a strict sense we can therefore only
allow for studies comparing ANN-approaches to tech-
niques used solely in context of time series forecasting,
such as the Box}Jenkins approach. The overall result so
far appears to be that neural models o!er a reasonable
alternative to classical time series methods. However, the
performance characteristics have not been studied in
detail yet (Sharda, 1994). Traditional forecasting models
and neural models seem to perform about the same.
2.6.2.3. Optimization. ANN have been proposed as bio-
logically inspired optimization approaches. Many of the
reported applications are successful in solving optimiza-
tion problems using neural nets or develop theoretical
Table 5
Empirical "ndings concerning ANN topology and ANN learning, cf.
Section 2.1
200 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
results for "nding the global optimum. Researchers have
attempted to use neural nets in Operational Research
disciplines as, e.g., combinatorial optimization, linear
and non-linear programming, and multicriteria decision
making. From these "ndings we can take it for granted
that neural nets have the ability to solve optimization
problems and therefore can be said to be e+ective. On the
other hand, further development is necessary to construct
ANN-architectures as well as network training algo-
rithms with the ability to solve optimization problems
fast, i.e., e.ciently (Sharda, 1994).
2.7. Areas for future research
ANN-models have typically performed better than tra-
ditional statistical models in the area of classi"cation,
about the same in the area of forecasting, and not as
e$ciently in the area of optimization. The stated advant-
ages of neural nets in statistical applications include
robustness with respect to distributional assumptions,
the ability to classify correctly in cases with non-linear
separation surfaces, and the ability to cope with incom-
plete data. From a management scientist's point of view
ANN are attractive alternatives to a wide range of di!er-
ent models and moreover for di!erent classes of models.
In fact, in cases where their traditional counterparts
perform better this remains a strong argument in favor of
connectionistic approaches as the overall paradigm re-
mains essentially the same and the underlying functional-
ity is easy to communicate.
To make ANN-methods more acceptable in the "eld
of management there is de"nitly a need for further re-
search concerning some of the shortcomings of ANN-
theory:
(i) Several aspects of ANN-modeling have to be treated
in a more precise but nevertheless comprehensible
fashion. Today there still seems to be a lack of
structured documentation on how to choose, to de-
velop, to train, and to test ANN } this fact is re#ected
by the more or less unsystematic &&ad hoc'' concepts
and methodology, rules of thumb, use of default
values, etc. encountered in most of the cited studies
to design appropriate ANN-applications.
(ii) There is no single standardized paradigm for ANN
development. No sound statistical evidence can be
given for model discrimination purposes and there
seems to be no generally accepted theory on how to
solve the learning dilemma (over"tting vs. over-
generalization). Practically the same approach is
found in nearly all studies } comparison of a tradi-
tional method to its ANN counterpart (see Tables
2}4). The authors do not provide su$cient informa-
tion on what considerations they based the selection
of the applied ANN-approaches on, thus reinforcing
the black box critisism of ANN.
(iii) Most papers do not report completely how they
solved the problems at hand by the ANN-approach.
We propose eight parameters which should be in-
cluded within a thorough documentation. When
looking at the rather sparse columns of Tables 2}4
the discrepancy becomes obvious: only 60% of the
entries (186 out of 8;39) are "lled; keep in mind that
we excluded all studies for which only a few at-
tributes have been reported (cf. Section 2.2).
(iv) Unfortunately, there is a de"nite lack of work evalu-
ating the performance of ANN-models when indi-
vidual level consumer or market response data are
used, so no generalizable evidence can be reported
here (Heimel, 1994; Gaul et al., 1994). This is worth
mentioning as the performance of ANN-models
compared to traditional models di!ers from one
application to another and seems to be quite sensi-
tive to the speci"c nature and level of the analyzed
data set (Dasgupta et al., 1994).
3. Conclusion
In this paper we have tried to survey recent develop-
ments in the area of applications of ANN to di!erent
problems in Management Science. Moreover we tried to
classify these approaches according to the well-known
paradigm of traditional quantitative approaches. This
should allow the elaboration of a generally acceptable
structuring of this very promising approach in order to
promote further developments. We summarize the main
points of interest brie#y:
z The applicability of ANN to a very broad range of
problems in Management Science has been proved by
a large number of publications but there is a clear
de"cit of more complete work describing neural net
models; in particular nearly all quoted papers lack
documentation of the applied ANN.
z The majority of the papers cited uses the same type of
ANN-architecture and training scheme, namely a three
layer feedforward perceptron in combination with the
backpropagation training algorithm.
z The discrimination between traditional methods and
ANN or between alternative ANN-models is based
mainly on very elementary statistical considerations
and is not performed by means of adequate model-
discrimination criteria. Thus further research e!orts
should lead also to test-statistics for the evaluation of
multidimensional, highly non-linear models.
z There exists a considerable degree of conformity
about the basic performance criteria for ANN-solu-
tions. Particularly the appropriateness (data and do-
main appropriateness) of the model is measured by
its ability to generalize results on the one hand and
by goodness of "t on the other hand. The former is
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
most often checked by crossvalidation on a previously
selected hold-out-sample while the latter is performed
by hit-rate or by s-statistics.
z Despite its very broad applicability and its good or
sometimes superior performance compared to tradi-
tional methods in certain problem domains, we cannot
con"rm the general superiority of the ANN modeling
approach. Since ANN may be regarded as a mainly
data driven procedure the data analyzed predomi-
nantly in#uences the performance of these methods.
There is some evidence that relevant factors in this
respect are qualitative in character (e.g., problem do-
main of data, level of aggregation). Additional research
on this issue is required.
ANN-approaches are a very attractive new tool for the
management scientist and can be used to solve a number
of di!erent problems on a quite sophisticated level. Addi-
tional research should help us to use this class of models
to consider a priori hypotheses in the stage of model
de"nition and to extract new hypotheses after training. In
this way ANN-methods could be used appropriately to
corroborate previously conjectured theory on the one
hand but also, on the other hand, as a data-driven explo-
rative research instrument detecting structural informa-
tion not considered before. There still exists a drawback
for these methods since the "tting procedure of ANN is
computationally more demanding than most other
quantitative models (more computing time and bigger
sample sizes are necessary). As long as appropriate
computer software is not readily available for the man-
agement scientist working in this "eld the further devel-
opment of ANN methods depends crucially on future
achievements in computer science.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful com-
ments given by Eckehardt KoK hler on a previous version
of this article.
References.
Antweiler, W., 1991. Ein Backpropagation-Netzwerksimulator als
konnektionistisches Expertensystem. Wirtschaftsinformatik, 33. Jg.,
Heft 5, pp. 398}407.
Arizono, I., Yamamoto, A., Ohta, H., 1992. Scheduling for minimizing
total actual #ow time by neural networks. International Journal of
Production Research 30, 503}511.
Aurifeille, J.-M., 1996. Exploring consumer behavior processes
using connexionnist methods. In: Hildebrandt, L., Laurent, G.
(Eds.), First French-German Workshop on Quantitative Methods
in Marketing, Humboldt-UniversitaK t zu Berlin, Institut fuK r
Marketing.
Baetge, J., Krause, C., 1993. The classi"cation of companies by means of
neural networks. Journal of Information Science and Technology
3(1), 96}112.
201
Baetge, J., Krause, C., 1994. Kreditmanagement mit Neuronalen
Netzen. In: Zahn, E. (Ed.), Technologiemanagement und Tech-
nologien fuK r das Management, SchaK !er, Poeschl, Stuttgart, pp.
383}409.
Baetge, J., Jerschensky, A., Hermann, D., Stibi, B., 1995. Die Auswahl
pruK fungsbeduK rftiger Betriebe im Rahmen der steuerlichen Au{en-
pruK fung. Der Betrieb, Heft 12, 48. Jg., MaK rz, pp. 585}594.
Baetge, J., HuK ls, D., Utho!, C., 1995. FruK herkennung der Unterneh-
menskrise - Neuronale Netze als Hilfsmittel fuK r KreditpruK fer. For-
schungsjournal der WestfaK lischen Wilhelms-UniversitaK t MuK nster, 4.
Jg., Heft 2, pp. 21}29.
Baetge, J., Schmedt, U., HuK ls, D., Krause, C., Utho!, C., 1994. BonitaK t-
sbeurteilung von JahresabschluK ssen nach neuem Recht (HGB 1985)
mit KuK nstlichen Neuronalen Netzen auf der Basis von Clus-
teranalysen. Der Betrieb, Heft 7, 47. Jg., Februar, pp. 337}343.
Becker, J., 1994. Konstruktionsbegleitende Kalkulation mit Neur-
onalen Netzen innerhalb einer integrierten Informationssystemar-
chitektur. In: Scheer, A.-W. (Ed.), Innovatives Controlling - Der
Weg zum Turnaround, Heidelberg, pp. 157}167.
Berry, J., 1994. A potent new tool for selling: database marketing.
Business Week (Industrial/Technology Edition) 56}62.
Bird, J., 1995. Logical guides to marketing. Management Today 58}62.
Bischo!, R., Bleile, C., Graalfs, J., 1991. Der Einsatz Neuronaler Netze
zur betriebswirtschaftlichen Kennzahlenanalyse. Wirtschaftsinfor-
matik, 33. Jg., Heft 5, pp. 375}385.
Burger, A., Schellberg, B., 1996. Neuronale Netze in der
Jahresabschlu{analyse. Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung und
Praxis (BFuP) Heft 1, 1996, pp. 102}122.
Chu, C.-H., Widjaja, D., 1994. Neural network system for forecasting
method selection. Decision Support Systems 12, 13}24.
Conrad, O., 1996. Die EinsatzmoK glichkeiten von neuronalen Netzen im
Rahmen der Absatzprognose und Bezugsregulierung im Vertrieb
von Publikumszeitschriften. Frankfurt et al., Lang.
Corsten, H., May, C., 1995. UnterstuK tzungspotential KuK nstlicher Neur-
onaler Netze fuK r die Produktionsplanung und -steuerung. IM In-
formation Management, 10. Jg., Heft 2, pp. 44}55.
Corsten, H., May, C. (Eds.), 1995. Neuronale Netze in der Betriebswir-
tschaftslehre. Wiesbaden.
Crooks, T., 1995. Marketing with neural networks . . . Or, &You Gotta
know the territory. Credit World 18, 18}20.
Curry, B., Moutinho, L., 1993. Neural networks in marketing: model-
ling consumer responses to advertising. European Journal of Mar-
keting 27, 5}20.
Dasgupta, C.G., Dispensa, G.S., Ghose, S., 1994. Comparing the predic-
tive performance of a neural network model with some traditional
market response models. International Journal of Forecasting 10(2),
235}244.
de la Garza, J.M., Rouhana, K.G., 1995. Neural networks versus para-
meter-based applications in cost estimating. Cost Engineering 37(2),
14}18.
Decker, R., Gaul, W., 1990. Einige Bemerkungen uK ber Expertensysteme
fuK r Marketing und Marktforschung. Marketing ZFP, Heft 4, IV.
Quartal 1990, pp. 257}271.
Decker, R., RoK hle, M., Wagner, U., 1995. Kaufverhaltensmodelle im
praktischen Einsatz fuK r Analyse und Optimierung. In: Baier, D.,
Decker, R. (Eds.), Marketingprobleme: Innovative LoK sungsansaK tze
aus Forschung und Praxis, S. Roderer Verlag, Regensburg, pp.
63}72.
Erxleben, K., Baetge, J., Feidicker, M., Koch, H., Krause, C., Mertens,
P., 1992. Klassi"kation von Unternehmen. Ein Vergleich von Neur-
onalen Netzen und Diskriminanzanalyse. Zeitschrift fuK r Betrieb-
swirtschaftslehre (ZfB), 62. Jg., Heft 11, pp. 1237}1262.
Fischer, M., Dor!ner, G., Hornik, K., 1996. Computational Intelli-
gence. In: Mazanec, J., Otruba, H. (Eds.), Adaptive Information
Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science,
proposal by the WirtschaftsuniversitaK t Wien (Vienna University
of Economics and Business Administration) to the Fonds zur
202 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
FoK rderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Austrian Research
Foundation), pp. 42}78.
Fish, K.E., Barnes, J.H., Aiken, M.W., 1995. Arti"cial neural networks:
a new methodology for industrial market segmentation. Industrial
Marketing Management 24, 431}438.
Fleisch, E., 1993. Reihenfolgeplanung in Flexiblen Montagesystemen
mit Neuronalen Netzwerken. Doctoral thesis, WU-Wien.
Gallant, S.I., 1993. Neural Network Learning and Expert Systems. MIT
Press, Cambridge: MA.
Gaul, W., Decker, R., Wartenberg, F., 1994. Analyse von Panel- und
POS-Scanner-Daten mit Neuronalen Netzen. In: GfK-NuK rnberg
(Ed.), Jahrbuch der Absatz- und Verbrauchsforschung, Heft 3, 40.
Jg., BerlIn: Duncker and Humblot, pp. 281}330.
Grohs, C., 1994. Einsatz KuK nstlicher Neuronaler Netzwerke zur En-
twicklung eines Indextradingsystems am Beispiel des ATX-Index.
Master thesis, WU-Wien.
Gruca, T.S., Klemz, B.R., Petersen, E.A.F., 1995. Inside the Black Box:
Neural network modelling of aggregate market response. Working
Paper, April, University of Iowa.
Hantschel, G., Zimmermann, H.-G., 1992. Neuronale Netze zur Prog-
nose in der Finanz- und Automobilwirtschaft. Intelligente Soft-
ware-Technologien, 2. Jg., Iss. 3, pp. 46}48.
Hebb, D.O., 1949. The Organization of Behaviour. Wiley, New York.
Hertz, J., Krogh, A., Palmer, R.G., 1991. Introduction to the Theory of
Neural Computation. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Heimel, J.P., 1994. Konnektionistische Analyse des Kaufverhaltens.
Doctoral-thesis, UniversitaK t Regensburg.
Hill, T., O'Connor, Remus, W., 1996. Neural network models for time
series forecasts. Management Science 42(7), 1082}1092.
Hohler, B., 1991. Nicht nur Theorie: Neuronale Netze sichern Produk-
tqualitaK t. Computerwoche 18(40), 58}64.
Hornik, K., Stinchombe, M., White, H., 1989. Multilayer feedforward
networks are universal approximators. Neural Networks 2,
359}366.
Hruschka, H., 1991. Einsatz kuK nstlicher neuronaler Netzwerke zur
Datenanalyse im Marketing. Marketing ZFP Heft 4, IV. Quartal,
217}225.
Hruschka, H., 1993. Determining market response functions by neural
network modelling: a comparision to econometric techniques.
European Journal of Operational Research 66, 27}35.
Hruschka, H., Natter, M., 1993. Analyse von Marktsegmenten mit Hilfe
konnexionistischer Modelle. Zeitschrift fuK r Betriebswirtschaft 63.
Jg., Heft 5, pp. 425}442.
Hutchinson, J.M., Lo, A.W., Poggio, T., 1994. A nonparametric ap-
proach to pricing and hedging derivative securities via learning
networks. Journal of Finance 49(3), 851}889.
Jiang, J., 1995. Using scanner data. Information Systems Management
61}66.
Kaparthi, S., Suresh, N., 1994. Performance of selected part-machine
grouping techniques for data sets of wide ranging sizes and imper-
fection. Decision Sciences 25(4), 515}539.
Kolmogorov, A.N., 1957. On the representation of continuous func-
tions of many variables by superposition of continuous functions of
one variable and addition. DokladyAkademii Nauk USSR 114,
953}956.
Krycha, K.A., 1992. A comparison of standard methods with a neural
network approach to forecast univariate time series. Research
Memorandum No. 310, Institut fuK r HoK here Studien, Wien.
Kryzanowski, L., Galler, M., 1995. Analysis of small-business "nancial
statements using neural-nets. Journal of Accounting, Auditing and
Finance 10(1), 147}172.
Krzyston, M., 1995. Predicting pro"tability: "nding and keeping the
right customers. Credit World 84(2), 27}30.
Kumar, A., Rao, V.R., Soni, H., 1994. An empirical comparision of
neural network and logistic regression models. Proceedings of the
23th Annual Conference of the European Marketing Academy
(EMAC 94), pp. 1365}1367.
Kurbel, K., 1994. Maschinenbelegungsplanung auf Basis neuronaler
Netze - ein Vergleich mit konventionellen Verfahren. In: Wagner, H.
(Ed.), Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Unternehmensforschung: Ak-
tuelle problemorientierte Konzepte, Ludwig Pack zum 65. Gebur-
tstag, Wiesbaden, pp. 53}73.
Kurbel, K., Pietsch, W., 1991. Eine Beurteilung konnektionistischer
Modelle auf der Grundlage ausgewaK hlter Anwendungsprobleme
und VorschlaK ge zur Erweiterung. Wirtschaftsinformatik 33. Jg. Heft
5, pp. 355}364.
Laarhoven, P.J.M., van, Aarts, E.H.L., Lenstra, J.K., 1992. Job shop
scheduling by simulated annealing. Operations Research 40(1),
113}125.
Lacher, R.C., Coats, P.K., Sharma, S.C., Fant, L., 1995. A neural
network for classifying the "nancial health of a "rm. European
Journal of Operational Research 85, 53}65.
Lee, Y.-H., Kim, S., 1993. Neural network applications for scheduling
jobs on parallel machines. Computers and Industrial Engineering
25, 227}230.
Lenard, M.J., Alam, P., Madey, G.R., 1995. The application of neural
networks and a qualitative response model to the auditor's going
concern uncertainty decision. Decision Sciences 26(2), 209}227.
Lo, Z.-P., Bavarian, B., 1991. Scheduling with neural networks for
#exible manufacturing systems. Proceedings of the 1991 IEEE In-
ternational Conference on Robotics and Automation, Sacramento,
pp. 818}823.
Lohrbach, T., 1994. Einsatz von KuK nstlichen Neuronalen Netzen fuK r
ausgewaK hlte betriebswirtschaftliche Aufgabenstellungen und
Vergleich mit konventionellen LoK sungsverfahren. GoK ttinger Wir-
tschaftsinformatik, Band 10, GoK ttingen.
Malakooti, B., Zhou, Y., 1994. Feedforward arti"cial neural networks
for solving discrete multiple criteria decision making problems.
Management Science 40(11), 1542}1561.
Markham, I.S., Ragsdale, C.T., 1995. Combining neural networks and
statistical predictions to solve the classi"cation problem in dis-
criminant analysis. Decision Sciences (2), 229}242.
May, C., 1996. Reihenfolgeplanung mit funktionsbildenden Neur-
onalen Netzen. Schriften zum Produktionsmanagement der Univer-
sitaK t Kaiserslautern (3).
Mazanec, J., 1990. Market segmentation once again: exploring neural
network models. Association Internationale d'Experts Scienti"ques
du Tourisme, Tourist Research as a Commitment, St. Gallen:
AIEST, pp. 36}53.
Mazanec, J., 1992. Classifying tourists into market segments: a neural
network approach. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing 1,
39}59.
Mazanec, J., 1993. Apriori and aposteriori segmentation: heading for
uni"cation with neural network modeling. Proceedings of the 22nd
EMAC Conference, European Marketing Academy, vol. 1, Bar-
celona: ESADE, pp. 889}917.
Mazanec, J., 1994. Image measurement with self-organizing maps:
a tentative application to Austrian tour operators. The Tourist
Review 49(3), 9}18.
McCulloch, W.S., Pitts, W., 1943. A logical calculus of ideas immanent
in nervous activity. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5, 115}133.
Miller, M., 1994. Neuronale Netzwerke fuK r Finanzdienstleister. Doc-
toral thesis, UniversitaK t Mannheim.
Nam, K., Schaefer, T., 1995. Forecasting international airline passenger
tra$c using neural networks. Logistics and Transportation Review
31(3), 239}251.
Natter, M., 1995. Neuronale Netze und Preismanagement. Wien, Ser-
vice-Fachverlag (Forschungsergebnisse der WirtschaftsuniversitaK t
Wien).
Natter, M., Buchta, C., 1993. Measuring demand interdependencies by
neural networks. Research Memorandum, Institut fuK r HoK here
Studien, Wien.
O'Brien, T.V., 1994. Neural nets for direct marketers. Marketing Re-
search 6(1), 47}49.
 K.A. Krycha, U. Wagner / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 6 (1999) 185}203
Odom, Sharda 1990. Neural network model for bankruptcy prediction.
Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Net-
works, IEEE, San Diego, 1990, vol. II, pp. 163}167.
Patterson, Dan, 1996. Arti"cial Neural Networks. Prentice-Hall,
Singapur.
Pietsch, W., Teubner, A., 1991. Konnektionistische Tourenplanung fuK r
die dezentrale Vertriebsau{endienststeuerung. In: Gaul, W. et al.
(Eds.), Operations Research Proceedings, Berlin, pp. 346}353.
Rabelo, L.C., 1990. A hybrid arti"cial neural networks and knowledge-
based expert systems approach to #exible manufacturing schedul-
ing. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Missouri - Rolla.
Rehkugler, H., Poddig, T., 1990. Statistische Methoden versus KuK n-
stliche Neuronale Netzwerke zur Aktienkursprognose. Diskussion-
spapier der UniversitaK t Bamberg, Nr. 73, Bamberg.
Rehkugler, H., Poddig, T., 1991. KuK nstliche Neuronale Netze in der
Finanzanalyse: Eine neue AG ra der Kursprognosen? Wirtschaftsin-
formatik, 33. Jg., Heft 5, pp. 365}374.
Rehkugler, H., Poddig, T., 1992. Klassi"kation von JahresabschluK ssen
mittels Multilayer-Perceptrons - Erste Ergebnisse und weiterfuK h-
rende Fragestellungen. Bamberger Betriebswirtschaftliche BeitraK ge
Nr. 87, Bamberg.
Rie{, M., 1994. Die Eignung Neuronaler Netze zur Prognose in der
OG konomie. In: Bol, G., Nakhaeizadeh, G., Vollmer, K.-H. (Eds.),
Finanzmarktanwendungen neuronaler Netze und oK konometrischer
Verfahren: Ergebnisse des 4. Karlsruher OG konometrie-Workshops.
Heidelberg, pp. 183}222.
Rittinghaus-Mayer, D., 1993. Die Anwendung von neuronalen Netzen
in der Marketingforschung. Akademischer, MuK nchen.
Rosenblatt, F., 1958. The perceptron: a probabilistic model for informa-
tion storage and organization in the brain. Psychological Review
65, 386}408.
Rudorfer, G., 1993. Anwendung kuK nstlicher Neuronaler Netzwerke als
datengetriebenes Analysewerkzeug. Master thesis, WU-Wien.
Rumelhart, D.E., Hinton, G.E., Williams, R.J., 1986. Learning internal
representation by error propagation. In: Rumelhart, D.E., McClel-
land, J.L., the PDP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel Distributed
Processing: Explorations in the Microstructures of Cognition, vol.
1. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 318}362.
Rumelhart, D.E., Widrow, B., Lehr, M., 1994a. The basic ideas in neural
networks. Communications of the ACM 37(3), 87}92.
Rumelhart, D.E., Widrow, B., Lehr, M., 1994b. Neural networks: ap-
plications in industry, business and science. Communications of the
ACM 37(3), pp. 93}105.
Ruppel, A., Siedentopf, J., 1992. Konnektionistisch motivierte Reihen-
folgeplanung in FertigungsleitstaK nden. In: GoK rke, W., Rininsland,
H., Syrbe, M., (Eds.), Information als Produktionsfaktor, pp.
554}563.
Salchenberger, L.M., Cinar, E.M., Lash, N.A., 1992. Neural networks:
a new tool for predicting thrift failures. Decision Sciences 23,
899}916.
Sarle, W.S., 1994. Neural networks and statistical models. In: SAS
Institute Inc. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual SAS
Users Group International Conference, Cary, NC: SAS Institute
Inc., pp. 1538}1550.
Schmidts, R., 1995. Analyse von Software zur Simulation neuronaler
Netzwerke. Master thesis, WU-Wien.
Sharda, R., 1994. Neural networks for the MS/OR analyst: an applica-
tion bibliography. Interfaces 24(2), 116}130.
Steiner, M., Wittkemper, H.-G., 1993. Neuronale Netze. Die Betrieb-
swirtschaft - DBW 53(4), 447}463.
203
Tam, K.Y., Kiang, M.Y., 1992. Managerial applications of neural net-
works: the case of bank failure predictions. Management Science
38(7), 926}947.
Tang, Z., de Almieda, C., Fishwick, P., 1991. Time-series forecasting
using neural networks vs. Box-Jenkins methodology. Simulation
57(5), 303}310.
Taudes, A., Natter, M., Trcka, M., 1996. Real option valuation with
neural networks. International Journal of Intelligent Systems in
Accounting, Finance and Management, to appear.
Vaithyanathan, S., Ignizio, J.P., 1992. A stochastic neural network for
resource constrained scheduling. Computers and Operations Re-
search 19, 241}254.
van Wezel, M.C., Baets, W.R.J., 1995. Predicting market responses with
a neural network: the case of fast moving consumer goods. Market-
ing Intelligence and Planning 13(7), 23}30.
Venugopal, V., Baets, W., 1994. Neural networks and their applications
in marketing management. Journal of Systems Management, pp.
16}21.
von Altrock, C., 1991. Neuronale Netze. WiSt Heft 12, pp. 625}627.
Wagner, U., Taudes, A., 1986. A multivariate polya model of brand
choice and purchase incidence. Marketing Science 5, 219}244.
Wagner, U., Taudes, A., 1987. Stochastic models of consumer behav-
iour. European Journal of Operational Research 29, 1}23.
Wang, S., 1995. The unpredictability of standard back propagation
neural networks in classi"cation applications. Management Science
41(11), 555}559.
Wartenberg, F., 1995. Disaggregation aggregierter Verkaufsdaten. In:
Baier, D., Decker, R. (Eds.), Marketingprobleme: Innovative LoK sun-
gsansaK tze aus Forschung und Praxis, S. Roderer, Regensburg, pp.
219}230.
Wartenberg, F., Decker, R., 1996. Analysis of sales data } a neural net
approach. Gaul, W., Pfeifer, D., (Eds.), From Data To Knowledge
} Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Classi"cation, Data Analysis
and Knowledge Organization. Springer, Berlin.
Werbos, P.J., 1974. Beyond regression: new tools for prediction
and analysis in the behavioural sciences. Dissertation, Harvard
College.
Widrow, B., Ho!, M.E., 1960. Adaptive switching circuits. 1960 IRE
WESCON Convention Record. part 4, New York, pp. 96}104.
Wierenga, B., Kluytmans, J., 1994. Neural nets versus marketing mod-
els in time series analysis: A simulation study. Proceedings of the
23th Annual Conference of the European Marketing Academy
(EMAC 94), pp. 1139}1153.
Wilbert, R., 1991. KreditwuK rdigkeitsanalyse im Konsumentenkredit-
geschaK ft auf der Basis Neuronaler Netze. Zeitschrift fuK r Betriebswir-
tschaftslehre (ZfB), 61. Jg., Heft 12, pp. 1377}1393.
Williams, N., 1994. Data mining with neural networks. Insurance
Systems Bulletin 9(7), 3}4.
Wilson, R.L., Sharda, R., 1994. Bankruptcy prediction using neural
networks. Decision Support Systems 11(5), 545}557.
WoK lker, M., 1992. KuK nstliche Neuronale Netze zur Optimierung der
Tourenplanung in der Kommissionierung. Zeitschrift fuK r Logistik
10, 40}44.
Wray, B., Palmer, A., Bejou, D., 1994. Using neural network analysis to
evaluate buyer-seller relationships. European Journal of Marketing
28(10), 32} 48.
Zwietering, P.J., van Kraaij, M.J.A.L., Aarts, E.H.L., Wessels, J., 1991.
Neural networks and production planning. In: Neuro-Nimes (Ed.),
Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Neural Networks
and Their Applications, Nimes, pp. 529}542.