Application of Unsupervised Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Self_Organizing Map (SOM) in Identifying Main Car Sales Factors

TL;DR

This paper applies a self-organizing map neural network combined with fuzzy Delphi techniques to identify key factors influencing Iranian car buyers, revealing insights that differ from expert rankings to aid manufacturers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combination of fuzzy Delphi and SOM neural network to analyze consumer decision factors in car sales, providing data-driven insights.

Findings

Four main factors significantly influence customer decisions.

Results differ from expert rankings, highlighting new priorities.

Method enhances understanding of consumer behavior in automotive marketing.

Abstract

Factors which attract customers and persuade them to buy new car are various regarding different consumer tastes. There are some methods to extract pattern form mass data. In this case we firstly asked passenger car marketing experts to rank more important factors which affect customer decision making behavior using fuzzy Delphi technique, then we provided a sample set from questionnaires and tried to apply a useful artificial neural network method called self_organizing map SOM to find out which factors have more effect on Iranian customer's buying decision making. Fuzzy tools were applied to adjust the study to be more real. MATLAB software was used for developing and training network. Results report four factors are more important rather than the others. Results are rather different from marketing expert rankings. Such results would help manufacturers to focus on more important factors and increase company sales level.