International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies
Keywords: Marketing strategy, SIVA marketing mix, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, nominal group technique, consistent fuzzy linguistic preference relations (CFLPR)
1. INTRODUCTION
Marketing thinking was chiefly company-focused before the middle of the 20th century. Since that time, marketing thinking has shifted to a customer-focused perspective [1], and customers have been deemed a potentially valuable resource in the resource-based views of the firm [e.g., 2, 3]. Empirical studies have provided evidences for the positive influence of a customer-focused perspective on performance [e.g., 4, 5]. Gligor, et al. [6] has also shown the positive effects of adopting a customer-focused perspective of supply chains on performance. Since the middle of the 20th century, the customer-focused perspective has received extensive research and attention, and its impact on corporate performance has been supported empirically.
It is well known that the quality of a marketing strategy affects the performance of a company. The availability of a strategy evaluation model is critical in terms of determining the suitability of selected marketing strategies. For the past three decades, there have been extensive studies on marketing strategies. These studies can be grouped into the following categories: 1. Studies developing a research framework on marketing strategies [e.g., 7-9]. 2. Studies examining the relationships of associated variables on marketing strategies [e.g., 10, 11-15]. 3. Studies exploring new concepts or ideas about marketing strategies [e.g., 16-18]. 4. Studies investigating how marketing strategies affect performance [e.g., 19-21]. 5. Other research, including studies offering marketing strategies planning for individual companies [22]; studies looking into how marketing strategies affect stakeholders [23]; studies examining the factors driving marketing reforms and their impact on international marketing strategies [24]; studies looking into the creative strategies of social media [25]; and studies examining the external and internal factors that affect international marketing strategies [26]. Most conceptual frameworks connected with marketing strategies have sought to investigate the causal relationships and correlations between variables, and only a small number of studies have employed multiple attribute decision making (MADM) models to explore the key attributes of marketing strategies. While the various aspects of these MADM models simultaneously contain elements of both customer-focused and company-focused perspectives [e.g., 27, 28], 21st century marketing thinking has already shifted from a company-focused outlook to a customer-focused perspective [1, 29], and a customer- focused orientation has become an important marketing strategy for many firms [30]. A MADM model for assessing the key attributes of marketing strategies must therefore have a fully customer-focused perspective. However, this study discovered that during the most recent 30 years, researchers have not proposed a standard MADM model for the evaluation of marketing strategies based on a customer-focused perspective. With the absence of a unitary and consistent basis for the evaluation of marketing strategies, the future of a company may be endangered if marketing managers make baseless judgements.
When facing challenges to their survival, humans must convert their needs and wants to concepts that can be communicated, and must express those concepts using language[31]. This study has found that a unified MADM model combining SIVA[29]
Tsuen-Ho Hsu, Sen-Tien Her, Yung-Han Chang and Jia-Jeng Hou 35
and a conceptualization of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs [32] can fully represent the attributes of customers’ needs and wants, and only a model of this type is fully compatible with a customer-focused perspective. Accordingly, this study chose a SIVA marketing mix intended to deepen customer thinking with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as its theoretical basis, and established the SIVA-Need MADM model for the evaluation of marketing strategies on this basis. This study further uses this model to evaluate key attributes able to enhance customer satisfaction, showing that it can be employed as a tool for the evaluation of marketing strategies’ key attributes. With a unitary evaluation foundation, executives and managers may select their marketing strategies to improve business performance. To examine the applicability of the resulting model, this study also conducted a case study of the Apple company.