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The work described in this paper was inspired by a problem increasingly
vexatious to many businesses confronting the ever-diminishing life
cycles of modern productsviz., that of predicting characteristics (such
as overall demand, segmentation, etc.) of markets facing new product
introductions. A framework is proposed that allows the market parameters
of new products to be derived by analogy with those of old ones. To do
so, the framework combines the capabilities of Bayesian
networks [14] and description logics [16].
The paper commences with an exposition of the problem that motivates the
work. There follow brief descriptions of Bayesian networks and
description logics in their unalloyed state, and a discussion of issues
surrounding their combination. The combined system is presented, along
with an account of its formal details and an inference procedure for
entailment. A sample application of the framework is given. The paper
concludes by comparing the proposed framework with related existing
systems and by suggesting possible courses for future development.
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