Crafting a successful seller-customerrelationship for sports product: AHP fuzzy approach

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the criteria of successful salespersons, which is important to enhance in store customer experience. Method: Employed two phase sequential exploratory design, qualitative and quantitative data were collected using purposive sampling technique. For qualitative analysis, 11 sales experts with at least 4 years working experience were interviewed and the data were analyse using thematic analysis. For quantitative analysis, 20 physical education and sports science students were chosen as respondents. Criteria and sub-criteria is weighted quantitatively using Fuzzy AHP and analysed using MATLAB software. Results: From the qualitative analysis, 4 criteria’s (customer orientation, information knowledge, ethical behaviour, and personal characteristics) and 11 sub-criteria were identified. From the quantitative analysis, ranked were provided whereby customer-orientation with a weight of 0.2647 were in the first rank, information knowledge is at the second rank with 0.2556 weight, ethical behavior is at the third rank with 0.2450 weight, and personal characteristics is at the last rank with 0.2347 weight. Conclusions: The findings of this paper are important for sports retail industry, to revamp their sales and marketing strategies. With enhanced understanding regarding consumer needs, sports retailer can sell their products in a more effective manner to increase their market share.