A Fuzzy Hybrid Approach to The Marketplace Seller Selection Problem in E-Commerce

Abstract

Considering today's conditions and the sudden emergence of an epidemic disease, internet commerce has necessarily increased. This situation has led to the diversification of vendors and an increase in their number in different sectors. The increase in internet sellers has made it difficult for customers to decide which product to buy from which seller and how. For this reason, the marketplace sites were examined and the most important criteria affecting the preferences of the customers were determined. Most of these criteria are based on linguistic terms that decision makers can express using fuzzy expressions. In this study, vendor selection problem is solved using a hybrid model by combining Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Hierarchical TOPSIS methods. In the study, seller ratings, customer comments and opinions from experts in the field were taken. Three main criteria and seventeen sub-criteria were determined and applied to the Fuzzy Hybrid Approach. According to the results of the applied hybrid method, the most effective main criterion was found to be the general characteristics of the seller with a weight of 0.68. Ease of communication with the seller was obtained from a sub-criterion of this main criterion with a weight of 0.30. Thus, as a result of the analyzes made, it was concluded that the customers attach more importance to the general characteristics of the seller and to the after-sales communication than the other criteria. The proposed hybrid model has been successfully applied to the marketplace vendor selection problem in Turkey.