Fuzzy Decision Making for Market Positioning and Developing Strategy for Improving Service Quality in Department Stores

Conventionally designed questionnaires frequently use the Likert Scale to gauge the feeling of respondents. The dichotomy and the same interval integer are clear-cut. Owing to the fuzziness of human thinking, this approach is inadequate and too simple to rule subject’s way and measure complex human thinking and cognition. Consequently, this investigation integrated the five dimensions of SERVQUAL and adopted a Fuzzy set theory based approach. The five criteria of SERVQUAL were tested for four department stores using Fuzzy set theory to clarify the positioning of service quality in the department store market and propose implementation priorities for different service strategies. This result permits managers to collate the service strategy of the benchmarking department store and its local competitors, and also enables department store decision-makers to consider the weights of the five dimensions when modifying the service strategy. The analytical results can be used to improve strategy development, and to devise superior and more effective management methods.