Selection of the optimum promotion mix by integrating a fuzzy linguistic decision model with genetic algorithms

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an important process by which a company can influence a target market, improve the position of that company's product/service in the target market, and effectively build up its brand image. Sales promotion is an important communication channel designed to influence the customer's purchasing behavior in the target market. There are many promotion tools available. Variations in business objectives and budgetary limits make it impossible for a company to employ all these promotion tools to convey sales messages to the customers. The selection of the best mix of promotion tools involves subjective information processing, instead of a numerically expressed objective decision-making process. In this research, we integrate a fuzzy linguistic decision model with a genetic algorithm (GA) to extract the optimum promotion mix of a variety of tools under satisfying expected marketing performance and budget limitations. The proposed methodology shows satisfactory results in an empirical study in terms of estimating the degree of satisfaction for achieving the business objectives, determining the optimum promotion mix, and minimizing expenditure on sales promotion activities. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.