Benchmarking sustainable E-commerce enterprises based on evolving customer expectations amidst COVID-19 pandemic |
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Authors: | Saurabh Pratap Sunil Kumar Jauhar Yash Daultani Sanjoy Kumar Paul |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India;2. Operations Management & Decision sciences, Indian Institute of Management, Kashipur, Uttarakhand, India;3. Operations Management Group, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India;4. UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia |
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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. |
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Keywords: | COVID-19 pandemic customer expectations e-commerce enterprises fuzzy VIKOR sustainability |
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