The Application of AHP Approach for Evaluating Location Selection Elements for Retail Store: A Case of Clothing Store

The aims of the study at using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) are two-fold. First, the study aims to determine the relative importance or weight of multiple criteria and its attributes in the decision problem of location selection. The second aim of the study is to identify a location with the highest potential among alternatives for retailers by using a series of criteria and attributes determined. By the means of the AHP method, decision makers put weighted values to the evaluation criteria with respect to the related goal and the attributes with respect to the corresponding criteria. In addition, the priority weight for every location alternative on each criterion and attribute is estimated. The AHP process involves hierarchically structuring decision problem, setting priority weights, establishing a judgment matrix and weight vector, and then ranking the order of location alternatives. To substantiate the feasibility of this standard approach, a case study is conducted with location selection for a clothing store in this study.