Introduction
In consumer marketing, brands often provide the primary points of differentiation between competitive offerings, and as such they can be critical to the success of companies (Wood, 2000). For consumers, brands can be used to identify the sources or manufacturers while let manufacturers or distributors to know their responsibility. Most importantly, the brands have a special meaning to consumers. Because consumers learned the brands based on the experiences of using the products and from the years of manufacturers marketing plans that they can find which brand is acceptable and which brand are not satisfy their needs. As a result, the brands become a kind of shorthand to simplify products purchase decision tools or methods (Keller, 2001). People may find it rational to make different inferences from the brands they see and from the words they hear (Kuksov, 2007). Therefore, the brands can help consumers connect all the factors of the product. While brands have been widely used to identify products origin and its physical characteristics for many centuries (Farquhar, 1989), currently, the brand-related issues, such as, brand loyalty, brand image and brand equity are widely discussed, but being less concerned about the brand-related marketing to create brand value. Based on the smiling curve (Shih, 1992), it showed enhancing the marketing and R&D will create value-added to the products or brands (see the Fig. 1). Herremans, Ryans, and Aggarwal (2000) also pointed out that customers are retained in several ways but generally by some form of investment in marketing and/or R&D. Optimal Branding Method Selection might lead directly to building brand value, which in turn retains customers.
Another possibility is that marketing support might retain customers; customer’s retention then reduces return volatility, which in turn builds brand value (Herremans et al., 2000). Keller (2001) noted that the beneficial association to the brands is able to satisfy the consumer’s needs and successfully communicate with consumers by the products or marketing strategy. The brand marketing includes many elements, we can generalize the elements from the literature of Keller (2001) who noted the brand-related marketing with product strategy, price strategy, channel strategy and communication strategy, and use them to satisfy customer’s needs for creating brand value.
However, there are many factors in brand marketing and they are complicated and interrelated. One of the hybrid MCDM model combining the decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) with analytic network process (ANP) and VIKOR methods can be effectively used to solve the complex and tangled problem of understanding the complex structure of the causal relationships; subsequently, one can probe the interrelated relationships between the dimensions and criteria and then to build a impact relation map (IRM) among criteria for brand marketing evaluation. The Optimal Branding Method SelectionOptimal Branding Method Selection of each factor of MCDM problem for selecting the best strategy will then be derived by utilizing the ANP combined DMATEL (Li and Tzeng, 2009a, Li and Tzeng, 2009b, Tzeng et al., 2007). We then identified the most suitable strategy by VIKOR and offered a complete depiction and testing of the decision model for a reference to enterprises (Chen and Tzeng, 2011, Chen et al., 2011; Chen, Lein, et al., 2011; Huang et al., 2011, Hung et al., 2011, Liou and Tzeng, 2011, Liu et al., 2011, Liu et al., 2012, Ou Yang et al., 2012, Shen et al., 2011, Yang and Tzeng, 2011).
Currently, the DEMATEL has been applied in Optimal Branding Method Selection Optimal Branding Method Selection to discuss consumers’ behavior of marketing strategy (Chiu, Chen, Tzeng, & Shyu, 2006); in the innovation of industries discussing the policy mix on re-configuration (Huang, Shyu, & Tzeng, 2007). And in R&D, Lin and Tzeng (2009) discussed the value of technology innovation. The analytic network process (ANP) was proposed by Saaty (1996) to overcome the problem of dependence and feedback among criteria or alternatives (Liou, Tzeng, & Chang, 2007). Furthermore, the ANP method is used to decide the relative weights of the criteria. It improves the visibility of decision-making processes and generates priorities between the decision alternatives. In order to provide a systematic approach to set priorities among multi-criteria and trade-off among objectives, the ANP method is applied prior to goal programming formulation, for example: selecting management systems for sustainable development (Tsai & Chou, 2009), the choice of logistics service providers (Jharkharia & Shankar, 2007). In addition, the VIKOR method was applied to determine the best feasible solution according to the selected criteria, such as prioritizing land-use restraint strategies (Chang & Hsu, 2009), supplier selection (Sanayei, Mousavi, & Yazdankhah, 2010), portfolio selection (Ho, Tsai, Tzeng, & Fang, 2011).
Therefore, the purpose of Optimal Branding Method Selection this study is intended to provide an empirical case in brand marketing to demonstrate how the MCDM model can be applied to brand marketing to discover important factors that can create brand value. This study proposes a hybrid MCDM model combining the DEMATEL with ANP and VIKOR methods to illustrate the interrelated relationships in brand marketing. After understanding the interrelated relationships, we can find the problems or gaps in brand marketing; then, we evaluate the situation to reduce the gaps in order to achieve the aspired levels in each criterion by considering an impact-relations-map for brand marketing to create brand value. This study also ranks the priorities of dimensions and criteria to find the important factors in brand marketing and also evaluates the customer’s satisfaction of brand marketing in 3 chosen electronic manufacturing companies in Taiwan.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: we reviewed the literature in Section 2. A hybrid MCDM model combining DEMATEL with ANP and VIKOR for brand marketing is introduced in Section 3. An empirical case of brand marketing is illustrated to demonstrate the proposed methods in Section 4. Conclusions are presented in the last Section.
Optimal Branding Method Selection snippets
Literature review
The purpose of this Section is to identify the influential factors of brand marketing based on past literatures and discuss studies. To make up for such a gap, this study conducted a literature review of Keller (2001) who noted that the elements and selections of brands will create value for the customer-based brand, and the most important strategy is brand-related marketing activities and marketing planning such as: the perceived quality, perceived value and enhance the consumer experience of
Building a hybrid MCDM model combining DEMATEL with ANP for Optimal Branding Method Selection
As any criterion may inter-influenced, this study adopted DEMATEL technique to know the influenced structure between the criterion and try to find the problems which we can improve. After knowing the influenced structure between each criterion, we weighted them by combined the ANP method to find the most important criterion that will help to create brand value. In order to understand the gap of each criterion and to rank the first important strategy to carry out, the VIKOR technique will be
The empirical case of electronic manufacturing industry
In this Section, an empirical study is displayed to illustrate the application of the proposed model for evaluating and finding the key success factors of brand marketing which will help to create Optimal Branding Method Selection
Conclusions and remarks
To consumers, the brands are used to identify the value of products and company image. In order to enhance values of products, we proposed the brand marketing to reach the goal. We applied the MCDM model combining DEMATEL with ANP and VIKOR methods to identify the interrelated relationships and find the most important factor of brand marketing. As the empirical results, value pricing is the most important factor, followed by consumer’s price perception and perceived quality. The results
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