Evaluation of e-commerce websites using fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-S-QUAL

Abstract

In the wake of the rapid emergence of e-commerce, its evaluation is of great theoretical and practical importance. Among the various types of e-commerce, business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has become a key, and especially influential, retailing channel. Its ascendancy raises core issues with respect to how the customer is to be satisfied by, and therefore inclined to trust, e-commerce websites. B2C e-commerce website evaluation, therefore, is an important related issue. First, while a number of studies have studied B2C e-commerce website evaluation using various multiple-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) methods, they have focused only on the perceived service quality of B2C e-commerce websites. In fact, it is generally recognized that service quality is determined by the difference between the expected service level (which expectation is derived from information obtained before the service experience) and the actual, perceived service level; this concept, then, should be also be afforded due consideration in B2C e-commerce website evaluation. Second, among the various MCDM approaches, TOPSIS, which involves the consideration of both the positive-ideal solution (PIS) and the negative-ideal solution (NIS), is especially pertinent to the complex decision-making entailed in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites. Third, the human element of subjectivity in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites needs to be considered in order to enable modeling of real-life website-evaluation situations. Finally, the hierarchical structure of the evaluation criteria between the main dimensions and their sub-criteria should be considered. To reflect these issues, in this paper, we present a fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-SERVQUAL (E-S-QUAL). This approach effectively considers the raised issues and preserves the core concept of E-S-QUAL (the extended version of SERVQUAL) for measurement of electronic service quality in the e-commerce environment. The empirical case study of B2C e-commerce provides the researchers and practitioners to understand in a better way the evaluation process from a practical point of view. In addition, core finding of this study is that the comparison results with other MCDM methods further verify the robustness of the proposed approach. It implies that this method potentially can be applied to performance evaluation of similar service sectors.