The development of an e‐commerce failure mode and effects analysis

In the last 50 years, the nature of business has changed, with a shift firstly from manufacturing towards service sector industries, and again more recently towards e‐commerce. Traditional quality management techniques, such as failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), although developed in manufacturing, have since proved effective and popular in measuring quality in the physical delivery of a service. There is, however, little research into the application of such techniques in e‐commerce. Parasuraman et al. (2005) highlighted the differences between physical service delivery and online service delivery, resulting in the e‐SERVQUAL scale of customer requirements. This study has developed this research further into a practical tool for organisations to measure quality and guide improvement efforts in an e‐commerce environment.