Selecting Cell Phone Service Using Hybrid Decision Making Methodology

In an ever expanding connected world, mobile connectivity is essential in both commercial and private use. Selecting the best option has become increasingly difficult due to the many factors surrounding the selection of the best cell phone service providing company. Quantitative factors such as monthly price, total cell phone minutes, and phone cost are easily comparable. However, other qualitative factors such as signal coverage, vendor reputation, and customer support are not as easily analyzed. The need to make the correct decision when qualitative factors need to be considered has caused multi-criteria decision methodologies such as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to be applied in case studies. In this paper, the authors apply Fuzzy AHP to phone survey results and compare them to the original results. The multi-criteria decision methodology TOPSIS is used to demonstrate the differences between all decision methodologies.