A model and algorithm of fuzzy product positioning

The purpose of this paper is to develop a fuzzy product positioning model, and to design an algorithm for evaluating the positions of each product with estimated ideal products by using a linguistic questionnaire. In order to compute with the linguistic data of questionnaire, triangular fuzzy numbers are used to represent the corresponding linguistic data. Function principle is used as the fuzzy arithmetical operations of triangular fuzzy numbers. In addition, utility similarity is proposed to choose the corresponding best linguistic data of both fuzzy average judgment values and fuzzy average ideal values. The modified geometrical distance method is presented to measure distance between two fuzzy numbers. Furthermore, the fuzzy synthetic distance method is introduced to calculate the fuzzy synthetic distance of each product position with estimated ideal product position. Moreover, a fuzzy architecture with linguistic attributes of product positioning is built. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.