A state-of-art survey on TQM applications using MCDM techniques

In today’s competitive economy, quality plays an essential role for the success business units and there are considerable efforts made to control and to improve quality characteristics in order to satisfy customers’ requirements. However, improving quality is normally involved with various criteria and we need to use Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) to handle such cases. In this state-of the-art literature survey, 45 articles focused on solving quality problems by MCDM methods are investigated. These articles were published between 1994 and 2013.Seven areas were selected for categorization: (1) AHP, Fuzzy AHP, ANP and Fuzzy ANP, (2) DEMATEL and Fuzzy DEMATEL, (3) GRA, (4) Vikor and Fuzzy Vikor, (5) TOPSIS, Fuzzy TOPSIS and combination of TOPSIS and AHP, (6) Fuzzy and (7) Less frequent and hybrid procedures. According to our survey, Fuzzy based methods were the most popular technique with about 40% usage among procedures. Also AHP and ANP were almost 20% of functional methods. This survey ends with giving recommendation for future researches

RANKING TRAVEL AND TOURISM ENABLERS IN INDIA USING A FUZZY APPROACH

This paper seeks to review the enablers for the Travel & Tourism (T&T) industry in India and to rank these factors. The paper aims to introduce a fuzzy TOPSIS approach for this purpose. The paper begins with a literature review to investigate the significant enablers in the T&T sector. The research was conducted among the tourists in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India which is a famous tourist destination both for adventure and pilgrimage. Fuzzy TOPSIS approach is used to meet the objectives of the study. Required information was gathered through a questionnaire. The results show that Safety & Security, Price, Transport and Infrastructure are the most important factors in Indian context.The paper will be helpful in enabling the T&T industry policy makers to identify the key service factors in the sector and take the improvement measuresThe concept of ranking T&T enablers using a Fuzzy TOPSIS is a new approach. The study is the unique application of a fuzzy approach to examine and rank customer expectations of the T&T enablers in Indian context

Evaluating Quality of Matrimonial Websites: Balancing Emotions with Economics

There are a plethora of studies evaluating the quality of websites on functional and design-related aspects such as usability and visual parameters. The majority of these studies are related to e-commerce websites where individuals make decision largely relying on economic parameters. However, matrimonial websites are unique, as the decisions involve both economic and non-economic parameters. Therefore, this study aims to propose a framework to evaluate quality of matrimonial websites by incorporating contextual factors and examine differences among different groups of users. This study proffers a website evaluating framework considering non-economic and emotion based factors from the information systems (IS) success model and the search match interaction (SMI) framework. The study proposes a hybrid model of multi-criteria decision-making techniques—namely Fuzzy-AHP and ranking models such as evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS), technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), and complex proportional assessment (COPRAS). The results indicate that the context-specific factors related to search and matchmaking options are the most preferred parameters for evaluation. Males and females have been found to differ in their preferences related to service quality and price. Next, the study compares the performance of three ranking models, namely EDAS, TOPSIS, and COPRAS. The first and second models provide similar results, while the rankings obtained through COPRAS differ slightly. The study contributes towards website evaluation literature by highlighting the importance of contextual factors while evaluating the matrimonial websites and the differences among preferences of the users

A consumer perspective e-commerce websites evaluation model

Existing website evaluation methods have some weaknesses such as neglecting consumer criteria in their evaluation, being unable to deal with qualitative criteria, and involving complex weight and score calculations. This research aims to develop a hybrid consumer-oriented e-commerce website evaluation model based on the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and the Hardmard Method (HM). Four phases were involved in developing the model: requirements identification, empirical study, model construction, and model confirmation. Requirements identification and empirical study were to identify critical web-design criteria and gather online consumers' preferences. Data, collected from 152 Malaysian consumers using online questionnaires, were used to identify critical e-commerce website features and scale of importance. The new evaluation model comprised of three components. First, the consumer evaluation criteria that consist of the important principles considered by consumers; second, the evaluation mechanisms that integrate FAHP and HM consisting of mathematical expressions that handle subjective judgments, new formulas to calculate the weight and score for each criterion; and third, the evaluation procedures consisting of activities that comprise of goal establishment, document preparation, and identification of website performance. The model was examined by six experts and applied to four case studies. The results show that the new model is practical, and appropriate to evaluate e-commerce websites from consumers' perspectives, and is able to calculate weights and scores for qualitative criteria in a simple way. In addition, it is able to assist decision-makers to make decisions in a measured objective way. The model also contributes new knowledge to the software evaluation fiel

Permutation based decision making under fuzzy environment using Tabu search

One of the techniques, which are used for Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is the permutation. In the classical form of permutation, it is assumed that weights and decision matrix components are crisp. However, when group decision making is under consideration and decision makers could not agree on a crisp value for weights and decision matrix components, fuzzy numbers should be used. In this article, the fuzzy permutation technique for MCDM problems has been explained. The main deficiency of permutation is its big computational time, so a Tabu Search (TS) based algorithm has been proposed to reduce the computational time. A numerical example has illustrated the proposed approach clearly. Then, some benchmark instances extracted from literature are solved by proposed TS. The analyses of the results show the proper performance of the proposed method

Referencial para a caracterização de websites de hotéis de acordo com as necessidades dos consumidores

Online presence is essential for tourism organisations, and the quality of websites can influence customers. In the case of hotels, there are many studies to evaluate website performance based on functionality, usability and other factors, much less on the amount of different information available to the consumer. In the near future by using Big Data it is expected that hotel websites will be dynamic, they will adapt themselves on-the-fly, showing personalized information to each consumer. Different consumers will have different websites (information? available) from the same hotel. This paper presents a framework for the characterisation of hotel websites, focusing on the amount of information available to the consumer in each website, which was applied in a case study during the last months of 2013 to the websites of five-star hotels that operate in the tourist region of the Algarve, Portugal. The framework allowed to identify a set of exhaustive indicators for hotel website characterisation, which were then grouped into ten fundamental information dimensions. These dimensions further fell into four dimension groups. Finally, it is presented and discussed quantitative and qualitative evaluations, that illustrates which indicators and dimensions are more often considered on hotel websites to satisfy the consumer?s information needs

A multi-attribute decision making procedure using fuzzy numbers and hybrid aggregators

The classical Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has two limitations. Firstly, it disregards the aspect of uncertainty that usually embedded in the data or information expressed by human. Secondly, it ignores the aspect of interdependencies among attributes during aggregation. The application of fuzzy numbers aids in confronting the former issue whereas, the usage of Choquet Integral operator helps in dealing with the later issue. However, the application of fuzzy numbers into multi-attribute decision making (MADM) demands some additional steps and inputs from decision maker(s). Similarly, identification of monotone measure weights prior to employing Choquet Integral requires huge number of computational steps and amount of inputs from decision makers, especially with the increasing number of attributes. Therefore, this research proposed a MADM procedure which able to reduce the number of computational steps and amount of information required from the decision makers when dealing with these two aspects simultaneously. To attain primary goal of this research, five phases were executed. First, the concept of fuzzy set theory and its application in AHP were investigated. Second, an analysis on the aggregation operators was conducted. Third, the investigation was narrowed on Choquet Integral and its associate monotone measure. Subsequently, the proposed procedure was developed with the convergence of five major components namely Factor Analysis, Fuzzy-Linguistic Estimator, Choquet Integral, Mikhailov‘s Fuzzy AHP, and Simple Weighted Average. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed procedure was verified by solving a real MADM problem where the image of three stores located in Sabak Bernam, Selangor, Malaysia was analysed from the homemakers‘ perspective. This research has a potential in motivating more decision makers to simultaneously include uncertainties in human‘s data and interdependencies among attributes when solving any MADM problems

Investigating car purchasing decision-making process using Multi- Objective Optimization Ratio Analysis based Analytical Hierarchy Process Model: An empirical case from Vietnam

This study aims to define and quantify the factors affecting selecting the best car among the market's available alternatives. Many criteria are involved while deciding to purchase the best car from various car models; therefore, car purchasing behaviour is a multi-criteria decision-making problem (MCDM). Proposed criteria are based on the customers’ survey when they are willing to purchase the cars, including Price, Branding, Safety, Performance, Exterior, Fuel efficiency, Maintainance cost, After-Sale Service, and Resale. In this study, the AHP technique calculates each criterion's weight, and then Multi-Objective Optimization Ratio Analysis (MOORA) is employed to rank the car models in a numerical example from Vietnam. The results show that this proposed model can minimize the consumer effort to select a car and make accurate decisions. Furthermore, this study's findings could provide car manufacturers with valuable insight into the criteria that reflect the customer's assessment of the car selection process. JEL: C02, C61, D53, Q1

Evaluating Quality of Matrimonial Websites: Balancing Emotions with Economics

There are a plethora of studies evaluating the quality of websites on functional and design-related aspects such as usability and visual parameters. The majority of these studies are related to e-commerce websites where individuals make decision largely relying on economic parameters. However, matrimonial websites are unique, as the decisions involve both economic and non-economic parameters. Therefore, this study aims to propose a framework to evaluate quality of matrimonial websites by incorporating contextual factors and examine differences among different groups of users. This study proffers a website evaluating framework considering non-economic and emotion based factors from the information systems (IS) success model and the search match interaction (SMI) framework. The study proposes a hybrid model of multi-criteria decision-making techniques—namely Fuzzy-AHP and ranking models such as evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS), technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), and complex proportional assessment (COPRAS). The results indicate that the context-specific factors related to search and matchmaking options are the most preferred parameters for evaluation. Males and females have been found to differ in their preferences related to service quality and price. Next, the study compares the performance of three ranking models, namely EDAS, TOPSIS, and COPRAS. The first and second models provide similar results, while the rankings obtained through COPRAS differ slightly. The study contributes towards website evaluation literature by highlighting the importance of contextual factors while evaluating the matrimonial websites and the differences among preferences of the users