Work

Benchmarking sustainable E‐commerce enterprises based on evolving customer expectations amidst COVID‐19 pandemic

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has seriously impacted the performance of all types of businesses. It has given a tremendous structural boost to e-commerce enterprises by forcing customers to online shopping over visiting physical stores. Moreover, customer expectations of the digital and operational capabilities of e-commerce firms are also increasing globally. Thus, it has become crucial for an e-commerce enterprise to reassess and realign its business practices to meet evolving customer needs and remain sustainable. This paper presents a comprehensive performance evaluation framework for e-commerce enterprises based on evolving customer expectations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework comprises seven primary criteria, which are further divided into 25 sub-criteria, including two sustainability factors, namely, environmental sustainability and carbon emissions. The evaluation approach is then practically demonstrated by analyzing the case of three Indian e-commerce firms. The results are obtained using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method, namely, Fuzzy VIKOR, to capture the fuzziness of the inherent decision-making problem. Further, numerical analysis is conducted to evaluate and rank various e-commerce enterprises based on customer expectations and satisfaction benchmarks. The findings explain the most important criteria and sub-criteria for e-commerce businesses to ensure customer expectations along with their economic and environmental sustainability.

Source: Business Strategy and the Environment

DOI: 10.1002/bse.3172

Authors: Saurabh Pratap, Sunil Kumar Jauhar, Yash Daultani, Sanjoy Kumar Paul

Institutions: Indian Institute of Technology BHU, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, University of Technology Sydney

Language: English

Topic: Multi-Criteria Decision Making

Subfield: Management Science and Operations Research

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Responsible consumption and production, Climate action

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,950