Location selection plays a very prominent role in retailing due to its high
and long-term investments. It is very difficult to make up once an inappro
priate convenience store (CVS) location has been established. The conventio
nal approaches within this domain can only provide a set of systematic step
s for problem-solving without involving the relationship among the decision
factors globally. Therefore, this study dedicates to develop a decision su
pport system using the fuzzy sets theory being integrated with analytical h
ierarchy process (AHP) for locating a new CVS. The proposed system consists
of four components: (I) hierarchical structure development for fuzzy AHP,
(2) weights determination, (3) data collection, and (4) decision making. Th
e model evaluation results. based on II-ELEVEN joined retailing system, sho
wed that the proposed system is able to provide very good solution both in
accuracy and speed for the top managers. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All
rights reserved.