Marketing Strategy Selection by Interval TOPSIS under Incomplete Data

Abstract

The choice of suitable marketing strategy is extremely valuable for any business. Some authors claim that, marketing strategy development involves a high degree of uncertainty and ambiguity on the one hand, and can be classified as a Multi-criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem on the other. In this paper, we try to see all aforementioned factors together. Since, in order to reflect uncertainty of the given information, interval TOPSIS, incomplete decision matrix, and interval criteria weights (instead of conventional modes, crisp data) are obtained is applied. However, in marketing strategy selection problem incomplete data is common, TOPSIS are not applicable to incomplete data. Therefore, to resolve this limitation, the Tamaddon et al. method (the mathematical formulations for finding the missing data in the Data Envelopment Analysis [DEA] environment), has introduced. In this paper, we focus our main attention on the innovative combination of TOPSIS and proposed method initiated by Tamaddon et al., and its uses in the marketing strategy selection problem under incomplete data. In the proposed method, input and output factors play the role of cost and benefit respectively. In addition, comparative analysis performed, and the proposed method seems to be more satisfactory than the traditional method in solving decision problem. The paper concludes with limitations and further research directions.

Keywords: MCDM, TOPSIS, Incomplete Data, Marketing Strategy Selection Problem

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