A hybrid fuzzy model for selecting and evaluating the e-book business model: A case study on Taiwan e-book firms

•This study aims to construct the business model for firms in Taiwan's e-book industry.•This study applied a hybrid fuzzy MCDM approach including FAHP, VIKOR, GRA, and TOPSIS to achieve the aim.•This study provides a complete analysis of e-book business model selection.

This study evaluates an appropriate business model for e-book firms in Taiwan. We apply expert questionnaires to calculate the weights, which contain five criteria, namely, business strategy (BS), finance characteristics (FC), market characteristics (MC), quality measurements of product and service (QS) and implementation (IM) (BCCSM) for the capability of developing the firms’ business. Then, a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is adopted to explore the weights of indices, and the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), grey relation analysis (GRA), and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) are utilized to rank the three alternatives. The results show that a single brand is the best e-book firms’ business strategy that is simultaneously integrated by content, platforms, and devices, while the top two weights of the evaluation criteria are the business strategy and market characteristics to enable firms to develop an appropriate e-book business model.