Hybrid Kano-fuzzy-DEMATEL model based risk factor evaluation and ranking of cross-border e-commerce SMEs with customer requirement

Abstract

The advance of “One Belt One Road” initiative and “Internet+” strategy have greatly promoted the development of cross-border e-commerce in the past several years. To gain global competition, the small-and-medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) have focused on the revenues and risk. However, most previous studies have focused on consumer perceived risk, while neglecting the importance of sellers’ risk. It is the aim of this article to address the following question: With growing customer requirement in global marketing competition, customer requirement plays an important role in the successful design of SMEs risk mitigation solution as SMEs’s performance is highly determined by customer satisfaction in the customer-oriented market. How to identify the most important risk factor of cross-border e-commerce SMEs based on influence of consumer requirements? Therefore, to balance the mutual interests in cross-border e-commerce online transactions. In order to achieve these objectives. We analyse cross-border e-commerce SMEs’ risk factor and develop a hybrid method for risk evaluation and ranking, named Kano-fuzzy-DEMATEL. This new method offers a more accurate way to calculate the degree of relation among each risk factor considering the influence of consumer requirements and deal with uncertain information on risk evaluation, as to determine the risk priority for cross-border e-commerce SMEs. The ranking of risk factors can provide basis for decision-making and improve the accuracy of prediction. We supplement existing e-commerce research to assess the overall risk factors from the seller’s perspective based on the customer requirement. The study can provide comprehensive insights to mitigate risk.