The multiple criteria and sub‐criteria for electronic service quality evaluation : An interdependence perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate multiple criteria and sub‐criteria of e‐SQ with the interdependence perspective, utilising three phases of measurement for the proposed e‐SQ evaluation. Design/methodology/approach – The paper utilises literature reviews to address the question of interdependence in the context of e‐SQ and constructs an interdependent network structure for e‐SQ evaluation. Then a method and three phases of measurement are proposed that combine the consistent fuzzy preference relations method with the analytic network process (ANP) technique, to evaluate e‐SQ by using senior experts who work at travel web site companies as research participants. Findings – First, this study discovered the interdependence perspective of criteria and sub‐criteria for e‐SQ evaluation. Second, it was found out that the weights of criteria and sub‐criteria have reverse situations after considering the interdependence perspective. Third, the findings indicate that the interdependence perspective among criteria and sub‐criteria should be taken into consideration, and the authors remind practitioners of the need to implement overall improvements instead of independently addressing each criterion or sub‐criterion of e‐SQ individually. Originality/value – The authors propose a scientific and systematic method for e‐SQ evaluation that can enable managers of online web sites to determine the important factors, and further to achieve total e‐SQ control management. Moreover the proposed method can deal with imprecise information when evaluating e‐SQ, as well as considering interdependent relationships among factors, and is thus faster and more efficient at addressing the inconsistency problems involved in multiple decision making than conventional methods.