Research on the Apriori algorithm in extracting the key factor

Business strategic decision making is designed to predict and analysis the future plan of the enterprise based on the situation now and the past. It plays an important role in the success or failure of the enterprise. Extracting the key factors in many elements that affect the enterprises' strategic decision making will help the company make the reasonable and effective decision, even the long-term development of the enterprise. The association rules mining can analyze the connection relationship and the causality in many factors. Among the numerous association rules mining methods, we choose the Apriori algorithm. Apriori Algorithm is one of the basic Association Rules Mining. It can reach a correlation between different properties through analyzing attribute value in group of affairs. Based on the balance score card (BSC), we choose five candidate factors that affect the strategic decision in three areas including the customer, the internal operational process and the study innovation. First of all, we sort out the data that based on the practice survey. Secondly, we find out the association between these factors with Apriori and the last we reach a conclusion that the enterprise innovation has a direct influence to the corporate reputation. This experiment which is of great practicability is an application of Apriori in enterprise decision and provides a good assistance for enterprise in strategic decision making.