Using ANP priorities with goal programming in optimally allocating marketing resources

Abstract

PurposeConstruction companies typically allocate limited resources, i.e. human resources and funds, for marketing activities; so, they commonly face the problem of deciding in which marketing activities they should primarily invest and how much resource they should allocate for the selected marketing activities. Indeed, the problem of selecting the best set of marketing activities should be treated as a multi‐objective optimisation problem with multiple obligatory and flexible goals with different priorities, several interdependencies, and multiple constraints on resources. The main objective of this paper is to solve the problem of optimal allocation of scarce marketing resources using the combination of analytic network process (ANP) and zero‐one‐goal‐programming (ZOGP) models.Design/methodology/approachThe research methodology of this paper mainly involves: reviewing the relevant literature on marketing and construction marketing; identifying the marketing activity alternatives in which construction companies may consider to invest; constructing an ANP model in order to calculate the importance weights of the different marketing activities; formulating a ZOGP model, which uses the weights obtained from the ANP model and considers the obligatory and flexible goals with different priorities, interdependencies and constraints on resources, that enables construction companies to optimize their scarce marketing resources; and conducting two case studies in order to illustrate how the proposed methodology works.FindingsThis paper provides construction companies with an integrated decision‐support methodology, which will assist them in allocating their limited marketing resources for different marketing activity alternatives in a more efficient way. The proposed methodology does not only consider the constraints on marketing resources and priorities of the goals that need to be satisfied but also show the deviations from the desired goals.Originality/valueThis paper is of benefit to construction companies as it offers an efficient and convenient tool that allows construction companies to optimise scarce marketing resources.