Online Information Review

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.