A Multi-Criteria Model for Marketing Strategy Selection for Batik Fashion Creative Industry in Indonesia

Abstract

Selecting the best marketing strategy is one of the multiple criteria decision-making problems which involves many criteria or attribute in sequences of the strategy formulation process. The objective of this paper is to develop a marketing strategy selection
model for the Batik fashion industry in Indonesia. Recently, Batik entrepreneurs as one of the fashion creative industry players in
Indonesia have realized that selecting the right strategy to market their products will assist them to survive in response to fierce
business competition. It is expected that the right marketing strategy will improve the profitability, operational efficiency and the
existing business process of the parties involved in the fashion creative industry's supply chain management. In this paper, marketing strategy selection is guided by integration and decision effort in connecting a comprehensive set of marketing criteria. A comprehensive model linking customer networking, innovation capabilities, managerial competency, human capital, and company reputation was developed to describe the strategy selection criteria in selecting marketing strategy alternatives. Then, multi-criteria decision-making methods were combined with goal programming equations to rank the priority of marketing strategy based on the Batik industry's resources limitation. The paper employs the multi-criteria decision-making process to
match fashion creative products' characteristics with the Batik industry characteristics and to determine the available marketing
strategy alternatives. Goal programming method was used to obtain the optimal marketing strategy from the selected Batik
industry. Bringing together multi-criteria decision making and goal programming methods under one research, this study shows
that Batik entrepreneurs in Indonesia should focus their marketing efforts through segmentation and product innovation in order
to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.