SIMAR: a software environment to define and test strategic management knowledge bases

Abstract The article describes the models used to simulate a consumer-good market, the firms competing on this market as well as the market allocation between products. The SIMAR application allows the formalisation of strategic knowledge under the form of rules. The first prototype of the application uses three simple knowledge bases coupled with the models to provide for each simulated firm a diagnosis on finance, product performance and production function. It is planned to use the blackboard architecture of the application to couple these knowledge bases to decide on the strategic decision of launching or abandoning a product. A future research goal is to automate the strategic decisions of the simulated firms and test formalised strategies in a simulated competitive environment.