The development of an evaluation model of e-commerce websites for the Taiwanese airline industry

The airline industry employs advanced e-commerce technologies to retain frequent customers and attract new passengers, but it is likely that not all airlines have clear knowledge about how many gaps should be filled between the status quo and an ideal website. This study proposes an integrated model for evaluating airlines’ websites in terms of the perspectives of “marketing mix 4Ps” and “website quality”. In order to verify the practicality and usefulness of this model, an empirical study of the Taiwanese airline industry is offered to illustrate the application of the proposed model. The model first applies the DEMATEL method to cope with the interdependencies between criteria. It then converts the criteria’s cause and effect relations into a visual structural map where the ANP method can help compute the weight of criteria. Finally, it uses the modified VIKOR method to rank e-commerce websites of the five Taiwanese airlines. Overall, the results show that the Taiwanese airlines still have a great deal of room to improve their websites. This proposed model not only provides helpful information for airlines to understand their websites’ quality level, but also contributes to industrial applications in terms of providing some worthwhile recommendations for building an ideal website.