Evaluation of Digital Marketing Technologies with Fuzzy Linguistic MCDM Methods

Abstract

Technology is becoming the tool that changes how people live every day, and the marketing strategies of businesses are also gradually shifting to the industry 4.0 mindset of constant growth and development. Digital marketing has changed human habits of information accessibility, deter-mined their interactions, and witnessed the birth of a variety of new marketing technologies. Mar-keters are creating digital marketing products and services that enhance the experience for consum-ers, products, and services that are also delivered through high digital marketing networks. As a result, data sources become more abundant and allow consumers to have more choices. All prod-ucts, services, technologies, and data are increasingly meeting the needs of consumers, thereby con-firming the effectiveness of digital marketing in today’s market. However, the evaluation and selection of digital marketing technology is very complex since it has many conflicting criteria and goals. The multi‐criteria decision‐making model (MCDM) is a powerful technique widely used for solving this type of problem. Thus, the author proposed a fuzzy linguistic MCDM method for evaluation of digital marketing technologies. After determining the evaluation criteria and alternatives, two MCDM methods, including Spherical Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (SF‐AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), are used in the evaluation and selection of digital marketing technologies procedure. Finally, an application is present to demonstrate the potential use of the proposed methodology. The main contribution of this study is to propose a Spherical fuzzy MCDM model to support planners and decision makers in the digital marketing technology evaluation and selection processes. A case study is also performed to showcase the fea-sibility of the proposed approach.