Ranking the Shahrvand Chain Stores: Focusing on Training and Creativity Criteria

In this paper, we develop a set of qualitative and quantitative criteria (financial performance, customer satisfaction, staff satisfaction) for evaluating and ranking the Shahrvand chain stores. Furthermore, the new economy criteria such as training, creativity and innovation are considered in the efficiency evaluation of the Sharvand Chain Stores. The information and data are collected by questionnaires, and interviews with the managements and professionals of the stores. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method which is composed of several unassociated concepts and techniques, such as, hierarchical structuring of complexity, pairwise comparisons, redundant judgments, an eigenvector method for deriving weights, and consistency considerations is used. Furthermore, Technical for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is employed to rank the stores. Its basic approach is to find an alternative which is closest to the ideal solution and farthest to the negative ideal solution in a multi-dimensional computing space. This multi-dimensional computing space is specified by a set of evaluation criteria as dimensions. The ideal solution represents a virtual alternative with a set of possibly best synthetic scores in terms of each criterion, while the negative-ideal solution is a virtual alternative with a set of worst scores. The findings show that out of eight stores, the Azadegan and Baharan Stores are respectively ranked to be the first and the last stores.