A hybrid multi-criteria decision making approach for strategic retail location investment: Application to Turkish food retailing

Abstract Retail location selection decision is a critical and complex process which requires the evaluation and aggregation of multiple criteria and also the usage of appropriate data related to them. This study handles the problem at a strategic level and proposes a Monte Carlo simulation based multi-criteria strategic location decision model for food retailing. This model integrates two multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods which are Hesitant Analytic Hierarchy Process (H-AHP) and Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) methods. Firstly, H-AHP method is used to obtain the weights of criteria to be used in GRA based on the experts' judgements. Secondly, simulation based GRA is used for ranking the alternative locations. Finally, the effectiveness and the applicability of the proposed model is illustrated with an application of strategic location investment decision of food retail stores in Turkey.