Analytic Network Process Based Strategic Planning for Iran's Trade Promotion Organization

Strategic planning in each organization identifies its orientation and coming priorities as all decisions to be adopted respect to the ensuing outcomes. Strategic decisions considering crucial and irreversible results should not be based on experience and judgments. This paper uses analytic network process (ANP) method for prioritization in strategic planning. ANP is mostly analogous to analytic hierarchical process (AHP) with the only difference that the latter takes into account no interdependence between criteria and hierarchal levels, but the former does. The interpretations of the experts of the Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization's (TPO), internal and external factors have determined Strength and Weakness points, opportunities and threats (SWOT) as well as their internal communications. After all, the appropriate strategies are defined and prioritized. In this paper, as a result, prioritization of strategies using AHP and ANP methods yield different results and to judge appropriately, the necessity of surveying relationships among criteria is indicated.