Title: Target market selection based on market segment evaluation: a multiple attribute decision making approach

Authors: Mohammad Hasan Aghdaie; Maryam Alimardani

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Shomal University, P.O. Box 731, Amol, Mazandaran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, P.O. Box: 11155-4563, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Target market selection is one of the most important marketing decisions for many companies. Besides, many other decisions of an organisation such as market mix, procurement and distribution channels are affected by this decision. An appropriate target market selection is performed upon market segment evaluation results and considering many factors such as segment size, number of competitors, risk and profitability. Moreover, multiple-attribute decision making (MADM) tools are used as a natural approach for evaluating alternatives with respect to conflict criterion, and target market selection can be considered as an MADM problem. To this end, a novel hybrid MADM method including AHP and TOPSIS is proposed to elicit a suitable target market. More precisely, AHP is derived to calculate each criterion's weight and TOPSIS is applied to rank target market alternatives from the best to the worst ones. Additionally, a case study is presented to validate the developed framework.

Keywords: marketing; market segmentation; target market selection; market segment evaluation; multiattribute decision making; MADM; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; TOPSIS.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2015.072231

International Journal of Operational Research, 2015 Vol.24 No.3, pp.262 - 278

Received: 16 Jan 2013
Accepted: 07 Oct 2013
Published online: 06 Oct 2015 *

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