Evaluation of Social Media Platforms Using Best-Worst Method and Fuzzy VIKOR Methods: A Case Study of Travel Agency

Abstract

A correct social media strategy is essential for travel agencies working in today's global market to reach customers. The travel industry is a service-oriented industry, and travel agencies can easily reach their customers on social media by transforming their marketing strategies at no extra costs. There are so many options that a travel agency can use to make itself more visible on social media. However, it is very difficult to choose the most suitable option. From this viewpoint, an analytical framework including BWM and fuzzy VIKOR is presented to find the best social media platforms in this study. First, the weights of nine criteria that were identified by the literature survey and expert interviews were obtained using BWM. Then, these weights were incorporated with fuzzy VIKOR for the ranking of social media platforms. During the implementation phase, the managers of a travel agency in Turkey were supported by the proposed framework for the organization. Results indicated that the cost criterion was the most important criterion (0.189), followed by the audience as the second rank (0.158). The results of the framework show that the proposed methodology is valid and can contribute to improving the decision-making process of enterprises and organizations.