Multiple Generation Product Life Cycle Based Marketing Promotion Mix Strategy Definitions by Hybrid MCDM Methods

Marketing promotion strategies, which are about the advertisement, public relationship development, sales promotion, etc., are one of the most important components of the high technology marketing mix programs. In an era of fast product and process innovations, the innovative product life cycles (PLC) are becoming daily shorter. Most dominant high technology electronic system products including mobile phones, personal computers, etc. have demonstrated multiple generation characteristics. Thus, appropriate marketing promotion strategies are especially important for such multiple generation PLC system products so that suitable actions can be taken aiming at promoting the fast cycling electronic products with comparatively shorter PLCs. Meanwhile, marketing communication costs can be reduced by defining strategies for multiple generation products instead of aiming at some specific generation. However, most existing researches on marketing promotion strategies in general and high technology marketing promotion strategies in special usually neglected the multiple generation characteristics of products. Further, most existing researchers on multiple generations PLCs have been focused more on technological forecasting while ignored the impacts of marketing mix variables. Be aware of the situation, this paper intends to propose an analytic framework for selecting the optimum portfolio of marketing promotion strategies at different PLC stages of electronic system products. A multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) framework consisting of the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) as the tool for configuring the decision problem structure, the Analytical Network Process (ANP) as the tool for calculating weights of each criterion, and finally, the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) as the tool for ranking the alternatives have been proposed for defining the marketing promotion strategies of multiple generation PLC system products. An empirical study on the liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions (TVs), one of the most popular consumer electronic products which have emerged during the past decade and demonstrated clear multi-generation characteristics, will be selected to demonstrate the feasibility of this proposed hybrid MCDM methods. Possible marketing promotion strategies were first derived by literature review. Then, experts being invited from Taiwanese LCD TV vendors and market research institutes were invited for providing opinions for the proposed marketing promotion strategies. The Empirical analysis result shows that the best marketing promotion strategies over each PLC stage include: (1)