A novel MADM approach to the ground-handling agent selection problem in B2B markets

Mahmut Bakır, Emircan Özdemir and Şahap Akan

Journal of Advances in Management Research, 2021, vol. 18, issue 5, 684-707

Abstract: Purpose - Ground-handling services are important for effective aircraft operations in the air transportation system. Airlines often outsource these services to ground-handling agents through business-to-business (B2B) marketing decisions. Therefore, this paper aims to address the problem of ground-handling agent selection in the airline industry. Design/methodology/approach - A real-world case study was carried out to demonstrate the applicability of the integrated best worst method and fuzzy multi-attribute ideal real comparative analysis (F-MAIRCA) approach to solve ground-handling agent selection problems under uncertainty and imprecision. A two-stage sensitivity analysis was also conducted to ensure the credibility and validity of the application. Findings - In the weighting stage, “Quality” was determined as the most important criterion in terms of supplier performance. With regard to the performance of the ground-handling agents, A2 was found as the optimal supplier in terms of both credibility and validity. Practical implications - This study enumerated several criteria that ground-handling agents must meet in order to effectively supply services for the airlines. In addition, this study provides a novel framework from which managers can gain additional benefits from their businesses. Finally, it is concluded that this approach will help airline managers quantitatively in choosing the most appropriate ground-handling agent. Originality/value - The contributions of this study to the existing literature are twofold. First, we propose a novel multiple attribute decision-making approach to address the problem of supplier selection for airlines under uncertainty and imprecision. Second, the selection of ground-handling agents from the B2B perspective is addressed for the first time in literature.

Keywords: Airlines; Ground‐handling agent selection; Best worst method; Triangular fuzzy sets; MAIRCA method; C02; L93; R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jamrpp:jamr-05-2020-0069

DOI: 10.1108/JAMR-05-2020-0069

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