An e-commerce performance assessment model: Its development and an initial test on e-commerce applications in the retail sector of China

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2008.12.003 Byline: Jinghua Huang (a), Ximin Jiang (b), Qian Tang (c) Keywords: E-commerce performance assessment model; Performance assessment indicators; Indicator weights; Majority aggregation; Multiattribute decision making Abstract: We developed a performance assessment model for e-commerce; it included indicators, indicator weights, and evaluation methods. The model has seven methods of assessing e-commerce performance and uses four criteria to compare and select the appropriate one for a particular situation. This model was tested in the retail sector of China. According to the data collected from 70 Chinese retailers, 16 indicators of e-commerce performance consisted of four constructs: marketing and sales, customer service, supply chain efficiency, and financial performance. The indicators for those constructs provide a comprehensive measurement of performance. Then weights were assigned for each indicator using a majority aggregation method. Comparison of the results from seven evaluation methods showed that discordance analysis and simple additive weighting were the best evaluation methods for the enterprises we had sampled. Author Affiliation: (a) Research Center for Contemporary Management, School of Economics & Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (b) HongKong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), China (c) McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA Article History: Received 8 April 2008; Revised 23 September 2008; Accepted 6 December 2008 Article Note: (footnote) [star] Supported by the National Science Foundation of China (70472007, 70772022, 70621061, 70831003 and 70890081) and MOE Project of the Key Research Institute of Humanity and Social Sciences at Universities (06JJD630014).