A Multi-Criteria Analysis Approach for the Evaluation and Selection of Electronic Market in Electronic Business in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

This paper presents a multi-criteria analysis approach for effectively evaluating and selecting the most appropriate electronic market (e-market) in electronic business by extending the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The subjective assessments of the decision maker in the e-market evaluation and selection process are represented by linguistic variables approximated by fuzzy numbers. The geometric centre based defuzzification method is used for transforming the weighting fuzzy performance matrix into the crisp performance matrix on which the TOPSIS is applied for calculating the overall performance of individual e-markets across all the selection criteria and their associated sub-criteria. An example is presented for demonstrating the applicability of the approach for solving the e-market evaluation and selection problem.