Selecting Cell Phone Service Using Hybrid Decision Making Methodology

1. Introduction

Technology in business and personal life has become ever increasingly entwined (Lavrakas, 2007). One such modern technology that has entrenched itself is mobile cell phones. With this ever increasing dependence on connectivity, an ever expanding list of cell phone service providers is available. With increasingly high demand, increasingly complex options are available by a myriad of cell phone companies (Sterling, 2010). When selecting a cell phone service provider, both cost and non-cost factors should be considered (Ju, 2009). Such cost factors of monthly price, plan minutes and phone price can be analyzed using straight-forward calculations. Non-cost factors to be considered are signal coverage, vendor reputation and customer support. These factors are difficult to compare and require such multi-criteria decision methodologies for the analysis.

The ever increasing visibility of selecting the best cell phone provider has caused a myriad of studies to be conducted using multi-criteria decision methodologies. One such study was conducted by Yang et al., University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Canada (Yang et al., 2008). They selected a mid-sized town in Canada with four cell phone provides and conducted phone surveys of its residents to determine the comparisons between them. They setup the comparison tables and applied Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology to develop a software support system residents could use to select the best provider for them. Other multi-criteria decision methodologies are available to make the best decisions.

A multi-criteria decision methodology allows for a determination between different factors where the comparisons between the individual factors are known. Generally, Table 1 depicts the taxonomy of decision methodologies.