The measurement of distributor performance with a multi-criteria decision making method

Abstract

Performance measurement is gained importance by academicians and businesses. By measuring performance businesses can see what they achieve, quantify their effectiveness, identify opportunities for improvement and compare their performance against competitors. Therefore, businesses that want to be successful and survive in competitive environment, should measure performance regularly. Generally businesses have always measured performance through the financial performance. So the purpose of this study is to rank the distributors of a company operating in food sector in Trabzon according to their financial performance. The measure of performance was carried out through liquidity, capital structure, activity and return rate of three distributors using grey relational analysis (GRA). The ranking obtained from the study gave the same result with the ranking as a result of that parent company carried out evaluation. This study is limited to only distributors in food-sector and only in Trabzon. Therefore further research needs to be extended to other distributors. Also future researches can be more comprehensive by using all financial ratios. Researchers also can use another multi-criteria decision making methods. Performance is an important competitive tool for distributor. Yet limited research has accomplished in this area. Thus, this is the first research that examined distributor performance in Trabzon.