Using DEMATEL-Based ANP Model to Measure the Successful Factors of E-Commerce

Abstract

Factors affecting online businesses are complicated and intertwined. To stimulate online sales, understanding of key influential factors and causal relationships among the factors is important. This paper introduces a hybrid method, called the DANP method, to expose the driving factors that most influence the online businesses. A hierarchy of fourteen criteria in six dimensions is formed to denote the influence levels and weights of factors. The causal graph shows that “Uncertainty” dimension has the highest degree of direct impact on other dimensions; thus, strong efforts should be made to eliminate the influence of this dimension throughout the online shopping process. In addition, the results also show “perceived price” to be the greatest important criterion among all; thus, it should be treated with top priority to boost the online businesses.