Marketing Strategy Selection Using Fuzzy Analytic Network Process

This study presents a multiple criteria decision making problem for selecting best marketing strategy among three alternatives according to five criteria, which are managerial capabilities, customer linking capabilities, market innovation capabilities, human resource assets, and reputational assets. The marketing strategies alternatives are product proliferation, product innovation, and manufacturing cost reduction. The objective is to select the best marketing strategy for the Istanbul store of a multinational furniture retailer. The alternatives according to the respective criteria are evaluated based on the linguistic statements of the marketing expert of the company. The fuzzy analytic network process is used for the problem at hand due to human subjective decision making and interdependence among criteria. Chang’s extent analysis method is employed in computing the pairwise comparison matrices. According to the results, among the marketing strategies alternatives, manufacturing cost reduction is selected as the best strategy.