Fuzzy Ranking Approach to Bi-Matrix Games with Interval Payoffs in Marketing-Management Problem

Abstract

World is full of uncertainties. In decision-making problems, uncertainty occurs in many forms such as fuzzy, rough, interval, soft and researchers use data in one of these forms for presenting uncontrollable factors. This paper aims to develop an effective method for solving bi-matrix game problem with interval payoffs assuming that the players know the upper and lower bounds on payoffs. First, bi-matrix game model with interval payoffs is considered. This model is then transformed to another model with fuzzy payoffs. Finally, ranking approach is used to convert the model to crisp-valued bi-matrix game model. Further, due to correspondence between games and programming problem, the Nash equilibrium of interval bimatrix game is obtained by solving a deterministic nonlinear programming problem with nonlinear objective and linear constraints. Finally, a real-life problem of marketing management is solved to validate, approve and illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and its solution method. The results derived are compared with some previously defined methods and conclusions are drawn further.