Retail Digital Transformation Through Expert‐Driven Strategic Decision‐Making: A Fuzzy DEMATEL ‐ DANP Study of Post‐Pandemic Taiwan

Digital transformation is key to strengthening the competitiveness and sustainability of the retail industry, especially in the post‐COVID‐19 era. As such, this study proposes the development of an expert‐driven decision‐support framework to identify the barriers, causal relationships, and improvement priorities related to retail digital transformation in Taiwan. Fuzzy decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory (F‐DEMATEL) was applied based on the structured judgements of 13 domain experts to construct an influential network relation map (INRM). Moreover, F‐DEMATEL‐based analytic network process (ANP) served to estimate interdependent criterion weights. A modified Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) was also implemented to identify performance gaps and improvement priorities. Based on the elicited outcomes, organisation and culture, alongside talent and capability, served as key causal drivers. Technology and tooling, data management, and strategy and implementation were primarily effect dimensions driven by these upstream conditions. Retailers should strengthen organisational alignment and human capability prior to expanding technological infrastructure, data‐management practices, and strategic implementation. Overall, the current work proposes a retail‐specific and uncertainty‐aware MADM framework for sequencing digital transformation initiatives in the post‐pandemic setting.