Fuzzy Marketing Mix Modeling (A Case Study of Automobile Battery Industry)

Designing and developing an effective marketing mix is an important issue for marketing planners who wish to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage particularly in the field of durable consumption goods with a seasonal supply and demand. Hence, to enjoy a coherent and dynamic mix, it would be an effective strategy to decide on the evaluation of every component of the marketing mix and to study the ways these components will interact to respond to the environmental changes. The main purpose of this paper is to determine the share and value of each of the underlying variables in the marketing mix in accordance with the marketing goals and strategies of a firm. The review of earlier studies indicate that the marketing mix component such as competitor’s price, competitor’s quality, competition intensity, sales forecast, and customers’ satisfaction level have been mainly stochastic, dynamic, vague, imprecise, qualitative or intangible that require approaches coherent with the innate nature of these variables. However, in most of the current models, the issue of designing a mix with structured approach and in a time-series framework has been handled without paying enough attention to the data nature and humane judgments, and the impact of the input variables on output variables. In the meantime, this paper tries to compensate for the aforementioned shortcoming by employing a fuzzy approach in modeling, reliance on the actual performance data, and analysis of the experts’ views.