Marketing mix (7P) and performance assessment of western fast food industry in Taiwan: An application by associating DEMATEL and ANP

To cope with consumer's behavioral change, the number of fast food has increased year by years, from 260 stores in 1995 to more than 700 stores today, the growth is more than three times. There are even four or five fast food stores in one kilometer, which shows its severe competition state. In such severe competition environment, some fast food stores might stand out but some fast food stores have to withdraw from the market due to bad business operation. When the supplier has to think how to enhance the business operation performance continuously, how to, aiming at core issues, perform the most effective improvement, thus becomes so important. However, in Taiwan's fast food industry, what is the key successful marketing mix (7P) is the focus to be investigated by this research. Therefore, in this study, through Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and through expert's view point, the mutual relationship among marketing mix (7P) perspectives in the fast food industry is found out. Then, through Analytic Network Process (ANP), expert's view of important rankings of marketing mix (7P) in fast food industry is thus investigated so as to perform the most effective improvement. Finally, Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method is used to evaluate the performance of the western chain store fast food industry and to analyze the current status of each fast food industry and to provide suggestions for them.