It should be noted that making justifiable decisions is both crucial and challenging. Therefore, it is important to ensure that making decisions, an individual should select the best criterion that would yield the best option both the individual and the situation. A weighted decision matrix refers to a table that is used to evaluate possible alternatives to a desired course of action with each alternative allocated a score on a desired scale depending on their perceived value under every criterion, and adding the scores to determine the most advantageous option that deserves most attention (Hubbard & Evans, 2012).
Situation
Having developed a new Eco-Washer, a new technology of washing mashing that is suitable for use in the laundries, both at home, hospitals, and in commercialized laundry companies, I had several options to choose from in the advertising procedure. I considered several promotional methods and settled on internet advertising because internet advertising has become one of the new trends in advertising. Having settled on internet advertising, there were also options to use such as Facebook, Twitter, My Website, Blog, or Google+. Additionally, factors such as cost of advertising, reliability of the site, its reliability, quality as well as the possibility of reaching the target customers on the chosen site were equally important.
Having considered the options and factors related to popularizing my new product. I decided to use the weighted decision matrix to decide on the best site to use. In my opinion and consideration of the factors, I rank the factors and options out of a maximum of five. In this ranking, cost and target customers scored the maximum because I believe that the main reason for advertising should be to reach the target market at the least cost. Reliability ranked 4, slightly above quality which scored 3, and accessibility at 2. In this ranking procedure, it is evident that in my decision-making, I seek to select the option that would involve the least cost with larger customer base followed by the average of the other factors. On the options, which were also ranked out of five, the option that scored the highest implied that this option provides the highest satisfaction of the factor considered against the option.
As indicated in the above table in the decision column, the best option to choose in advertising my product online is the use of Facebook. This option was reached after considering the scores of the factors against the scores of the options and the totals. From the individual data, Facebook scored 4 in the cost, which implied that the cost of advertising on Facebook is cheaper considered to the other options. Additionally, considering the next best option, which is Twitter, the score on reaching the target customers was slightly lower than Facebook and higher than other options. Therefore, I reached that the best option in this case is the one that has the highest score of the factors considered in the options (Jonassen, 2010). On the other hand, Google+ is the last option that I could use to advertise the product because despite scoring high on less important factors such as accessibility and reliability, it scored very low on the important factors. This implies that advertising on this site would be very expensive, reach very few customers, and provide low quality ads that might not appeal to the target audience.
Conclusion
The weighted decision matrix is a very important tool in making decisions, which is always a challenging process and involves complicated situations. The weighted decision matrix provides the decision maker with the best evaluation procedure to select the best option to choose while considering several important factors. Nevertheless, this criterion also has its weaknesses. For instance, getting the weightings in the first place is not always accurate. When conducted in groups, group members might disagree on the weightings to be given to the variables (Young, 2012). For example, while one member of the group might consider cost to be important, another might consider reliability as the most important factor. However, in this case, I believe that this risk is reduced because I solely conducted the weightings, and gave the best values according to my personal evaluation. After conducting a weighted decision matrix on the best method to use in advertising the Eco-Washer that I invented for domestic and commercial purposes, I found the criteria interesting and reliable. After identifying my options and factors, I reached the best alternative with ease and made my decision to advertise on Facebook or Twitter, and ignore Google+.
References:
Hubbard D. and Evans D., (September 27, 2012). Weighted Decision Matrix. Retrieved from http://www.weighteddecision.com/
Young M. (August 29, 2012). What Is a Weighted Decision Matrix, Tool or Template? Retrieved from http://jennygroothand.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-is-weighted-decision-matrix-tool.html
Jonassen D. (2010). Learning to Solve Problems: A Handbook for Designing Problem-Solving Learning Environments. London: Routledge.
