A fuzzy multiple criteria approach for evaluation among alternative marketing strategies

One of the sectors with a maximum number of employees across the country, Retailing sector is growing more and more with its increasing market share. This increasing market share becomes an important investment source for the firms, so they spend tremendous efforts on efficiency and strategy in order to raise their profitability. In the firms which aim at marketing the right product in the right time at the right place, related departments are operating currently. The firm starts the studies by selecting the most contributing subgroup through Pareto Analysis. Later, the marketing strategies with regards to that subgroup are determined. The marketing strategies involves both customer-oriented and firm-oriented information such as cost, profitability, number and presentation of products. With the help of the analysis done within the scope of this study, it is endeavored to choose a marketing strategy for the specified subgroup. Decision Making problems often contain conflicting criteria. In order to make the best single selection, multiple criteria decision making techniques are exploited. Within the context of this study, the problem of selection of alternative marketing strategy involves numerous parameters and criterion, therefore the selection of alternative marketing strategy is benefited as the multiple criterion decision making method unlike classical sets,Fuzzy sets enable the the flexibility in modelling the verbal expressions . So the more natural and realistic results are provided by modelling the cases. The fuzzy sets are thus exploited in this study. Fuzzy multiple criterion decision making methods are used in order to select the most beneficial strategy to the firm amongst the predefined strategies, at this stage, application study is made through the TOPSIS method based on Type-2 Fuzzy sets. Type-2 Fuzzy sets include more parameters than Type-1 Fuzzy sets do, which means that it has a more robust design structure. Type-2 fuzzy sets boost the sensitivity and reliability of the results. TOPSIS method which is based on Type 2 Fuzzy sets, used within the scope of the practice, offer a better possibility for modelling and digitizing the current situation. Besides, along with the TOPSIS method, an innovation is presented in this study. Buckley fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is exploited in stead of the methodology for weighting and the obtained wieght values are run again by TOPSIS method. It is observed that the results are consistent with each other.