Strategy study to prioritize marketing criteria: an approach in the light of the DEMATEL method

In a company, the marketing department is responsible for finding opportunities to spread the brand. Thus, it is essential to have effective communications and provide unique experiences to consumers. The objective is to attract more customers while retaining them to promote products or services and understand their needs for offering them what they are seeking. For all these, it is necessary to plan a good marketing strategy to reach the expected audience. This article aims to observe some of the main criteria for defining tactics in the area and explore the interrelationships between them through the Decision Marking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method. This Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model shows the influences exerted by the chosen components and their causal relationships, providing the understanding of a scenario in which the prioritization of some factors is fundamental for future actions. In this way, this study focuses on reviewing the literature, showing data about publications on this topic, and applying the method. It concludes that market trends have a considerable influence on relevant business criteria - target audience, products/services, competitors, investments; and that all these elements cause a significant impact on the system. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.