Determining rank in the market using a neutrosophic decision support system

ABSTRACT A company’s rank vis-à-vis that of its competitors is an important metric in understanding its position in the market. For a company, being ranked below its competitors indicates that customers are dissatisfied with its products, signalling the need for a review of its strategies. Existing state-of-the-art methods for ascertaining a company’s rank do not utilise the valuable data available on social media or most smart technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence. This study develops a new method to estimate a company’s rank using company-deployed intelligent software agents and social IoT(SIoT) objects. The company objects collect real-time feedback about one or more of the company products from social networks for storage and analysis. These company objects are equipped with questionnaires with important metrics such as the Customer Happiness Index, opinion on features of competitive products, expectations in upcoming models of the product. Then neutrosophic numbers have been used to determine truthiness, falsity and indeterminacy of each opinion and based on such opinions, rank of a company is determined.