27 January 2021

Research pick: Green and fuzzy decision making - "Application of fuzzy VIKOR on consumers purchasing the green home appliances"

Sometimes there is too much choice when a purchasing decision needs to be made. Consumers are often flummoxed by the myriad pros and cons of many alternative products. Often, a decision comes down to a single factor rather than an informed balance of all the options. As such, a purchase might be made that ultimately does not accommodate all of the original consumer’s needs and requirements leading to buyer’s remorse and disappointment. Environmental and “green” considerations are also now increasingly invoked in addition to the needs of the consumer in the decision-making process.

Tien Chin Wang and Yen Ying Huang of the Department of International Business at the National Kaohsiung University of Sciences and Technology, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, have investigated the often conflicting factors using fuzzy VIKOR analysis to look at how consumers choose between “green” domestic appliances. This approach allows complicated factors to be reasonably described in conventional quantitative expressions to get quantitative and rational explanations for given purchasing decisions.

The team’s conclusions could help marketing companies find better approaches to advertising the company products and reducing the amount of conflicting and confusing information the consumer must cope with in making their decision. The team concludes that the significance of their study is to accurately identify the most likely factors affecting consumers’ purchase decision, so that the industry might optimise the use of limited marketing budgets.

Wang, T.C. and Huang, Y.Y. (2020) ‘Application of fuzzy VIKOR on consumers purchasing the green home appliances’, Int. J. Green Economics, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp.349–365.

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