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

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.