An analyst at Harrison, Young, Pesonen, and Newell, Inc. had developed the media plan for a discount long distance telephone carrier (Super-Tel) and was supervising its execution. At the start of week eight of the twelve-week direct response television campaign she was monitoring customer response data from the telemarketing contractor in order to judge the performance of the advertising plan, with the objective of making adjustments to improve the plan. The analyst hoped to fine-tune the final weeks of advertising in order to maximize the number of customer orders received by Super-tel, while minimizing the costs of obtaining those orders. Could she use a decision support system to solve this problem. (A Microsoft Excel data file is available for use with this case, product 7A98E028.)
