Study on objectivity of mobile phone preferences: the MCDA analysis

Abstract Mobile phones are devices that are nowadays widely used by people. The development of technology has resulted in them being used not only for talking and messaging. They have functionalities that make them similar to personal computers. These devices are used to send and receive e-mails, browse the web, organize time, take pictures, play games, listen to music. There is also a possibility of installing various applications on them. The capabilities of these devices are closely related to their parameters, such as memory card size, internal memory, RAM, camera resolution. Price, which increases with the improvement of the parameters, also is a significant criterion of choice. Therefore, the choice of the most appropriate mobile phone model to match the consumer’s expectations requires the consideration of many criteria. Choosing the best option when making a decision is challenging because many factors influence the final decision. Additionally, they can be very diverse and difficult to take into account as a whole. An excellent solution to this problem is multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods, which support choosing from a wide variety of criteria. In this paper, four methods from the MCDA group - COMET, PROMETHEE II, VIKOR and TOPSIS - were used to determine the best mobile phone model among a group of alternatives. It is a complicated issue given the number of models available on the market and the number of parameters to consider when comparing. These methods have been successfully applied in the past to solve problems of similar complexity. All alternatives were analyzed using each method. Then the results were compared to each other to evaluate their similarity. Thus, the best mobile phone was selected for every applied method, and an attempt was made to find out the effect of MCDA method selection on the final ranking. The results obtained show that the tool based on MCDA methods is useful, appropriate, and effective in supporting consumer decisions when choosing mobile phones.