Construction Innovation: Information, Process, Management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide construction companies with an analytic model, namely a four-level analytic network process (ANP) model, to assist them in prioritising and thereby selecting marketing activities which offer maximum return on investment, for which they should primarily allocate their limited resources.

Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology of this study mainly involves: reviewing the literature on marketing and construction marketing in order to identify the marketing activity selection criteria and their constituent sub-criteria; determining the marketing activity alternatives in which construction companies may consider to invest; constructing an analytic model, namely a four-level ANP model – to assist them in selecting the most viable marketing activities for which they should primarily allocate their limited resources; and conducting two case studies, one in a bidding contractor and the other in a developer, in order to illustrate how the model works.

Findings – This paper illustrates how to empirically prioritise marketing activities by using a four-level marketing activity selection model. Two case studies are also demonstrated in order to illustrate how the model works. The case studies indicate that the rankings of the marketing activities for these companies are rather different due to the type of the construction company (i.e. bidding contractors or building developers) and its client profile (i.e. public or private owners). The findings of the case studies concurred with the expected direction in these companies.

Originality/value – This model is of benefit to construction companies and researchers. The proposed ANP model offers an efficient, convenient and simple tool that allows construction companies to select the marketing activities for which they should primarily allocate their limited resources. It also allows researchers to see the potential use of ANP in the marketing activity selection problem.