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JOURNAL OF APPLIED SCIENCES RESEARCH
JOURNAL home page: http://www.aensiweb.com/jasr.html
2014 March; 10(3): pages 176-181.
Published Online: 15 May 2014.
Research Article
Product Rating Based on Marketing Mix Elements According to Customers’ Preference
Using ANP Technique (Case Study: Market of Laptops ASUS, DELL, HP and SONY in
Tehran)
1
1
2
3
Mohammad reza Noorali, 2Abdol Hosain Karampour and 3Touran Razmavar
M.A Student of management department, Shahed University of Tehran, Iran
Assistant professor of management department, Maleke Ashtar University of Tehran, Iran
M.A Student of management department, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran.
Received: 25 January 2014; Revised: 8 April 2014; Accepted: 20 April 2014; Available online: 15 May 2014.
© 2014
AENSI PUBLISHER All rights reserved
ABSTRACT
Marketing mix elements are a collection of controllable marketing elements and tools by mixing of which, organizations and
companies form their own marketing strategies. The concept of marketing mix was first introduced in 1950‟s and McCarthy (1964)
proposed 4P as marketing mix which determines organization performance rout by a series of controllable variables. In the present study,
through library studies in the field of marketing mix and extraction of sub-criteria of these factors, the main sub-criteria in laptop market
were adopted by experts‟ comments and the correlation among the sub-criteria was determined. Furthermore, using Analytical Network
Process (ANP), marketing mix elements of four laptop brands including ASUS, DELL, HP and SONY were prioritized based on indices
and sub-indices. Based on evaluated marketing mix elements, results showed that among the laptop brands studied in the present study,
ASUS was rated the first place followed by SONY, HP and DELL.
Keywords: Marketing mix, marketing mix elements, Analytical Network process.
INTRODUCTION
Among various business activities, marketing
has the highest involvement with customers. In a
comprehensive definition, marketing is defined as a
managerial and social activity by which, one
addresses his/her demands through value exchange
with others. Marketing is, therefore, a process in
which, company creates value for customer and
establishes a firm relationship with him to get able to
receive value from the customer. The dual purpose of
marketing is to achieve new customers with higher
value and, at the same time, retain current customers
by obtaining their satisfaction. Correct marketing is
critical for success of any company. Big commercial
companies such as Procter & Gamble, SONY,
WALMART and IBM use marketing practices. Nonprofit organizations such as universities, hospitals,
museums, music bands and even mosques and
churches need marketing for achieving success [15].
Many companies have bad interpretation about
marketing. A not correct perception of marketing
was that employees believed that quality of products
and services is the only factor which determines their
sale rate. The perception didn‟t last long because it
was not responsive to current competitive market.
Production, sale and marketing should work together
to result in the best results. Marketing is the process
responsible for identifying, predicting and profitable
supplying of customers, demands. By this method,
organization will be able to prepare their products
and services according to customers‟ demands
instead of producing something and waiting for
customers‟ attraction [16]. The product (good or
service) should be in accordance with advantages
expected by customers. Price should be relevant to
buyers‟ abilities. The product should be offered to
customers so that the customer meets no trouble for
buying and finally required enhancements should be
performed so that potential customers get aware of
the existence of the product. Indeed, marketing mix
concept determines organization performance route
using a series of controllable variables in an
environment containing various uncontrollable
factors (external market) [5].
In the present investigation, according to
customers‟ preference, rating of marketing mix in
laptop market was studied to determine which
elements and their sub-categories have the highest
importance? Marketing agents, producers and sellers
should pay attention to these preferences and offer
their products according to customers‟ demands and
increase their sale. Ignoring this important issue in
current sensitive and competitive market may inhibit
the growth and profitability of the company and
bring about considerable losses.
Corresponding Author: Mohammad Reza Noorali, M.A Student of management department, Shahed University of Tehran,
Iran
E-mail: [email protected].
Number: 09379756125
177
Mohammad Reza Noorali et al, 2014 /Journal Of Applied Sciences Research 10(3), March, Pages: 176-181
2. Theoretical principles:
Marketing mix indicates principal activities
performed by marketing managers. After selecting a
target market, marketing managers should set a
systematic plan for sale to customers and for
establishing a long term relationship. The marketing
plan is composed of decisions regarding product,
price, promotion and place. These are the main item
managers should devote the resource to them to
achieve profitability and sale purposes [9].
Decision making on marketing mix elements
(price, product, place and promotion) and
determining their relative priority which are the bases
of marketing system is of great important, because
organizational goals and marketing of dependent
firms to complement target market demands is
formed for these elements [20]. Marketing mix
concept was first introduced in 1950‟s by Neil
Borden [10]. Marketing mix is mix of marketing
tools by use of which, the company tries to achieve
its goals [4]. Marketing mix proposed by Neil
Borden is composed of twelve variables [7] in 1960
McCarthy classified the twelve variables introduced
by Borden in to four categories as 4P. The mix was
quickly accepted and identified as a necessary and
appropriate factor in management and marketing
theory [8].
Table 1: Marketing mix models.
Mix models
Marketing mix 4P
Marketing mix 7P
Author(s)
McCarthy (1964)
Booms and Bitner (1981)
Marketing mix 8P
-
Marketing mix 4c
Latternbern (1990)
Marketing mix 5v
Marketing mix SIVA
Social Marketing mix
Bent (1997)
Spalter (1996)
Kotler and Anderson (2004)
Marketing mix 4s
Konstan and Tindes (2006)
3. Literature review:
Many investigations have been conducted both
within and out of the country on topic of
prioritization of marketing mix elements. In an
article entitled “Criteria Weighting and 4-P Planning
in Marketing Using Analytic Network Process”,
Alaybeyoglu et al [1] investigated strategies and
marketing decisions in product development process
and identified the most effective elements of
marketing mix for the process. According to the
results obtained in this study, for a new product the
company should devote 37% of all of its investment
to the product, 27% to price strategy, 19% to
promotion and 16% to advertisement [1]. Huang and
Sarigöllü [12] investigated the relationship between
awareness about brand and market results and the
The concept 4P is accepted as a principle in
marketing literature. 4P stands for four words:
product, price, promotion, and place. Marketing mix
dominated traditional models and methods of market
management such as Alderson‟s dynamic
performance-oriented method along with systemic
methods and parameter theory developed by
Copenhagen University in Europe. New methods
such as product vision, duty vision and geographical
vision were also encountered by the same fate. Only
a few models have survived against 4P [11].
Relationship between marketing mix and brand
formation and creating superior brand in market is an
important field in modern marketing. All steps in
brand formation depend on marketing mix and there
is huge interrelation between the two issues. To form
a brand, companies should design the marketing mix
in such a way that a positive image is created in
customer‟s mind [17]. Today companies have
understood that even firm performance is dependent
on marketing mix [13]. Through the years, scholars
and marketing analysts, inspired by 4P, have
searched for new marketing mixes and developed
new mixes as presented in table (1) [3]. In this
investigation, evaluating and rating of 4P marketing
mix is studied.
Elements
Product, price, place, promotion
Product, price, place, promotion, physical assets, personnel,
process
Product, price, place, promotion, physical assets, personnel,
process, personalization
Customer value, Cost to the Customer, convenience,
communication
Virtue, variety, volume, viability, value
Solution, information, value,access
Product, price, place, promotion, public groups, partnership, policy,
pure sterings
Scope, site, synergy, system
relation between awareness about brand and brand
special value. Moreover, effect of marketing mix
elements on brand reputation was investigated.
Results showed that customers‟ experience in
application of brand influences their awareness about
brand. Positive relationship between awareness about
brand and brand special value was confirmed.
Finally, results showed that place and promotion play
critical role in creating awareness about brand in
classification of packed products [12]. Clow et al [6]
in a paper entitled “The relationship of the visual
element of an advertisement to service quality
expectations and source credibility” indicated that
proper visual factors of an advertisement plays
important role in evaluation of product quality by
customers [6].
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Mohammad Reza Noorali et al, 2014 /Journal Of Applied Sciences Research 10(3), March, Pages: 176-181
In an investigation entitled “Prioritization of
Marketing Mix with Use of AHP Technique with
Marketing Strategic Planning Approach”, Tehrani et
al [20] studied strategy setting based on weakness
and strength points, threats and opportunity and
prioritization of marketing mix indices for four
companies (SONY, Panasonic, LG, and Samsung)
regarding LED products. In this investigation,
importance of each marketing mix component was
identified; then selection criteria for effective
marketing mix were extracted using questionnaire
and pairwise comparison; hierarchical analysis was
then performed and finally the required strategies
based on SWOT matrix and marketing mix for each
firm was formulated [20].
In an article entitled “Study of preference the
marketing mix Effective for Consumption of foreign
goods”, Vahdati [21] maintained that quality is the
most important factor from customer viewpoint in
consuming foreign products; the author introduced
quality as an important factor which characterizes the
product from those of competitive firms [21]. In their
study entitled “investigating different marketing mix
models to identify and prioritize elements of
marketing mix in Pegah dairy products”, Atafar et al
[3] identified the most important factors effective in
promotion of product sale as price, packaging, sale
prediction,
availability
and
advertisement,
respectively [3].
4. Methodology:
Among various multiple criteria-decisionmaking (MCDM) methods which are widely used in
all scientific fields and include two groups as
“multiple
purposes”
and
“multiple-indices”,
analytical hierarchy process (AHP) has gained much
attention as a Multi Attribute Decision Making
(MADM) method. A major limitation of AHP is that
the method does not consider interdependencies of
decision elements namely criteria, sub-criteria and
items and consider the interrelations of the decision
elements as hierarchical and one-way. Analytical
network process (ANP), one of MADM methods,
considers inter- and intra-relations of decision
elements through replacing hierarchical structure
with network one. Therefore application of ANP
instead of AHP has been increased in recent years
[22]. Indeed, ANP is a generalized and extended
version of AHP [19] in which interrelated issues and
their feedback is also considered.
Analytical network process (ANP) provides a
powerful and comprehensive method for accurate
decision making using experimental information and
personal judgment of every decision maker and
facilitates decision making procedure by providing a
structure for organizing different criteria and
evaluating importance and preference of each item in
relation to other ones. This method uses pairwise
comparison matrix to achieve relative measures and
exploits all the three qualitative, quantitative and
comparative methods simultaneously for data
gathering and analyzing.
In this investigation, prioritization of marketing
mix elements in laptop market regarding four brand
as HP, SONY, DELL and ASUS is studied using
analytical network process (ANP); the four brands
were then rated based on mix elements and its
subdivisions. Investigation steps are as follows:
In the first step, mix elements subdivisions were
extracted by reviewing reliable references and
standardized subdivisions were extracted from
marketing books compiled by “Rousta et al” and
“Kotler” as:
Product mix: quality, design, properties, size,
reputation, packaging, etc.
Price mix: discount, price list, repayment period,
credits, etc.
Promotion mix: advertisement, in place sale,
communication, direct marketing.
Place mix: distribution channel, market coverage,
transportation, etc [14,18].
In the second step, via interviewing with experts
and specialists in the field of laptop, the main indices
of laptop market were selected to obtain a correlation
matrix table (table 2).
In the third step, correlation matrix table was
offered to twelve experts in the field of laptop sale to
elucidate the relationships among the variables.
Standard form is between ten to twelve persons [2].
By evaluation of experts‟ comments, all the common
relationships confirmed by the experts were applied
to draw the network and prepare final questionnaire.
The confirmed relationships are presented in table
(2).
Network structure of ANP was drawn based on
the relations among clusters elements, relations
among clusters and relations among laptop brands
and indices as presented in figure (1).
Then, primary (Non-weighted) super matrix,
weighted super matrix and limited super matrix, from
which final priorities and weight of criteria and items
were extracted, were obtained. In the figure below,
final weights of criteria and items in limited super
matrix is presented.
Figure (2) shows the weight of each component
of marketing mix. Based on this, laptop brands were
rated as presented in figure (3).
As can be seen from super matrices outputs and
presented in total results of network analysis, rating
of laptop producers is as follows:
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Mohammad Reza Noorali et al, 2014 /Journal Of Applied Sciences Research 10(3), March, Pages: 176-181
Fig. 1: ANP model, network structure and the relationships between its constituent elements.
Fig. 2: The final weights of criteria and alternatives.
Fig. 3: The overall results across the network.
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Mohammad Reza Noorali et al, 2014 /Journal Of Applied Sciences Research 10(3), March, Pages: 176-181
Table 2: The final correlation matrix.
Product
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











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
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Table 3: Ranking of Companies producing laptop by using network analysis.
DELL
HP
ASUS
0.022618
0.027382
0.073792
5. Conclusion:
In this study, after designing ANP network and
determining the relationships in correlation matrix
set by experts‟ comments, a final questionnaire was
prepared whose data were analyzed by Super
Decision software. Results obtained in this
investigation present rating of laptop brands
according to 4P criteria (Product, Price, Place and
Promotion) and the most important sub criteria which
have the highest influence (including quality,
reputation, design, size and weight, warranty,
discounts, repayment, market coverage, distribution
channels, advertisement and in place sale). Results
obtained by network analysis are considered as utility
of each brands according to all the variables used in
the network. The results showed that ASUS brand
has the higher priority over other ones followed by
SONY, HP and DELL.

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SONY
0.050907

ASUS

SONY





HP

DELL

In place sale

Promotion
Advertisement
Distribution
channel

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Place
Market coverage


Repayment
period and
conditions
Promotion

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

Discounts
Place



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


Warranty
Reputation
Size and weight
Price
Quality
Design
Reputation
Size and weight
Warranty
Discounts
Repayment period and
condition
Market coverage
channels Distribution
Advertisement
In place sale
DELL
HP
SONY
ASUS
Design
Quality
Product
Price
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Ai
analytical network analysis to get able to achieve
more desirable and more comprehensive results in
their investigations.
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6. Limitations and suggestions for future studies:
[4]
Based on library studies and field investigations,
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1. Considering existing limitations, only four
laptop brands were investigated. It is suggested to
conduct further investigations for comparing and
rating of other laptop brands.
2. It is recommended to authors to carry out similar
investigations in other markets and thereby help
customers in selection of better brands or items.
3. It is recommended to investigators to become
more oriented toward quantitative methods such as
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