Title: Using entropy and AHP-TOPSIS for comprehensive evaluation of internet shopping malls and solution optimality

Authors: Anil Kumar; Manoj Kumar Dash; Ritu Seharawat

Addresses: School of Management (Marketing Analytics and Decision Science), BML Munjal University, Gurgaon (Haryana), India ' Behavioural Economics Experiments and Analytics Laboratory, ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management, 213, D Block, Gwalior (M.P.), India ' Behavioural Economics Experiments and Analytics Laboratory, ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management, 213, D Block, Gwalior (M.P.), India

Abstract: Consumers are switching from offline to online to buy everything due to this reason nowadays internet shopping malls (ISMs) are setting up a very crucial role in the economy. For assessment and ranking are basically a critical work which could be exploitation of internet shopping malls information resources when consider in a scientific way, there are many methods for the evaluation and ranking of e-commerce sites. Taking into consideration traffic rank, inbound links, competition, speed, and keyword statistics, in literature multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are rarely used by the researchers to find the rank of internet shopping malls (ISMs) on the basis of primary/secondary data of these influencing factors. This study, therefore, is unique to narrow down the gap in literature by employing MCDM methods i.e. entropy and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to collect the weight of influencing factors and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal (TOPSIS) to find the rank of internet shopping malls (ISMs). After finding out the rank of selected criteria, solution optimality needs to be done to find the average ideal solution matrix. Conclusion and managerial implications of the study are also discussed.

Keywords: internet shopping malls; ISMs; ISM ranking; entropy; TOPSIS; internet traffic; inbound links; competition statistics; speed statistics; keyword statistics; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; optimisation; online shopping; e-commerce; electronic commerce; multicriteria decision making; MCDM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2017.082575

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2017 Vol.11 No.4, pp.487 - 504

Received: 12 Jun 2015
Accepted: 19 Sep 2015
Published online: 02 Mar 2017 *

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