A Model of Customer Behavior for the Task Manufacturing Corporation

Abstract

The Task Manufacturing Corporation is a computer-simulated business firm. The objective is to simulate the operations of a real business firm on a greatly contracted time scale for use in education and research. The methodology is to build a business firm from detailed models of its subsystems. This paper discusses the model of one subsystem, the customer, who is viewed as a participant in an organization and whose behavior involves such participating notions as inducements, contributions, satisfactions, dissatisfactions and searches for alternative sources of supply.