Benchmarking the performance of dairy products in Chinese dairy industry

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the main factors that are important to consumers of dairy products and develop a new product performance index for evaluating and benchmarking the performance of dairy products. This helps dairy product companies understand their dairy products’ overall performance level, relative to other dairy products in the market. Design/methodology/approach: A new product performance index is developed for evaluating and benchmarking the performance of dairy products with respect to multiple criteria. Seven important criteria are identified for evaluating and benchmarking the performance of dairy products. To deal with the subjective assessments of qualitative performance measures, linguistic terms approximated by fuzzy numbers are used. Based on the concept of the degree of dominance, a fuzzy multicriteria group decision-making approach is developed to obtain a product performance index for each dairy product. Findings: The proposed multicriteria group decision-making approach is found to be useful and effective in evaluating and benchmarking the performance of dairy products. The approach is capable of adequately considering the presence of multiple decision makers, the multi-dimensional nature of the performance evaluation problem, and modeling the subjectiveness and imprecision of the performance evaluation process. Research limitations/implications: The outcome of the multicriteria group decision-making approach is dependent on the subjective inputs provided by the decision makers. Practical implications: This product performance index will provide useful insights for companies understand their strengths and weaknesses in terms of their products’ performance criteria, and identify relevant areas for continuous improvement. This product performance index is also applicable for dealing with the general multicriteria decision-making problems. Social implications: The proposed multicriteria group decision-making approach can be used as a decision-making tool for providing various decision makers in dairy product companies and general consumers with useful information regarding the performance of different dairy products. Originality/value: This paper highlights the important factors for evaluating and benchmarking dairy products and develops a new product performance index for evaluating and benchmarking the performance of dairy products in China. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.