Assessing Factors for Designing a Successful B2C E-Commerce Website Using Fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS-Grey Methodology

Abstract

The recent hype in online purchasing has skyrocketed the importance of the electronic commerce (e-commerce) industry. One of the core segments of this industry is business-to-consumer (B2C) where businesses use their websites to sell products and services directly to consumers. Thus, it must be taken care of that B2C websites are designed in a way which can build a trustworthy and long-term relationship between businesses and consumers. Thus, this study assesses and prioritizes factors for designing a successful B2C e-commerce website. The study employs multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), and to minimize any ambiguity and greyness in the decision-making, it integrates fuzzy and grey respectively with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to form FAHP and TOPSIS-Grey. Initially, the study conducts a thorough literature survey to screen important factors reported in past studies. Five main factors and nineteen sub-factors were selected for further prioritization. Later, FAHP prioritized factors based on their importance. Finally, based on the FAHP results, TOPSIS-Grey ranked five alternatives (e-commerce websites). FAHP revealed “service quality” as the most successful website designing factor, while TOPSIS-Grey reported “Website-3” as the most successful website, having incorporated the factors required to design a successful website.