Examination of the influence of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process in the development of an intelligent location selection support system of convenience store

Selecting the location for a convenience store is the first priority before any other decisions, and before the unchangeable hardware investment. It is difficult to compensate for the negative influence of a bad location decision. Therefore, the authors have applied the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to the capturing of opinions from experts concerning the importance of all feasible factors in the evaluation of potential locations. In addition, the authors examine the usefulness of the fuzzy AHP in the evaluation of site selection for convenience stores and its influence on the prediction accuracy of a neural net-based location selection system. The output accuracy of a neural network using those factors with higher weights is better than using the factors with lower weights. Therefore, the fuzzy AHP is practically useful in evaluating decision factors and in filtering the essential factors for developing a decision support system for locating a convenience store.