AN INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK FOR COMPETITIVE MARKET STRATEGY SELECTION BY USING FUZZY AHP

Firms realize that the selection of an appropriate competitive market strategy is essential to create value for customers and consequently to gain competitive advantage over their competitors. The review of relevant literature reveals that the competitive market strategy should be adopted with regard to both internal and external factors that impact on the firm's performance. Hence, according to the large number of factors and the complexity of decision making process, this study considers the selection of the best competitive market strategy as a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem and proposes an integrated framework on the basis of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (firm-level analysis) and Porter's competitive forces (industry-level analysis). The proposed framework utilizes the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (fuzzy AHP) in both firm-level and industry-level analyses. Also, the discussion on how to reconcile the two analyses is provided. Furthermore, to demonstrate the application of the developed framework, an empirical example from insurance industry is presented. The major advantage of applying this framework is that managers will systematically select the best competitive market strategy that not only fits with their firm's marketing resources, but also impedes the industry's competitive forces.