Artificial Neural Networks in Marketing from 1999 to 2003: A Region of Origin and Topic Area Analysis
Bhavit Gyan, Kevin E. Voges, Nigel Kenneth Pope · Griffith Research Online · 2004
Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are computer programs that model, at an abstract level, the neural connections found in brains. They are powerful general-purpose tools used in many data analysis tasks, such as prediction, classification and clustering. During the period 1999 to 2003, approximately 22,500 journal articles and 13,800 conference papers were published in the field. This paper presents an analysis of 88 publications that reported on the use of ANNs in marketing during that period. To obtain the publications, five bibliographic databases were searched for articles containing the terms “neural networks ” and “marketing. ” A limited number of category analyses are presented, concentrating on: number of papers per year, region of publication (country and continent), and study objectives and topic area. The paper shows that the number of published research papers using ANNs in marketing has increased every year since 1999. The majority of marketing applications of ANNs have been in the more “technical ” fields of power supply prediction and information technology. The United States, Europe and Asia have been the main sources of papers in the field. A lack of research and publications from Australia and New Zealand was noted.