Integration between Mathematical Programming and Fuzzy Logic to Optimize Consumers Behavior

Abstract

The concept of utility is used as a decision tool for consumers to choose a commodity. Analyzing consumer behavior is complicated due to the qualitative nature of the utility. Hence, this paper investigates a quantitative method to evaluate the utility of consumers. The methodology is based on linguistic expressions of fuzzy logic. Initially, the authors identify different parameters being effective on utility of a consumer. Then, using fuzzy linguistic expressions the quantitative value of utility are determined. Also some statistical analyses are set to investigate the effective parameters on the utility. Consequently, the optimization is done applying mathematical nonlinear programming. Some analysis is performed as sensitivity study. A case study is conducted to verify the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed methodology.