A Framework for identifying and prioritizing factors affecting customers’ online shopping behavior in Iran

Abstract: The purpose of this study is identifying effective factors which make
customers shop online in Iran and investigating the importance of
discovered factors in online customers’ decision.
In the identifying phase, to discover the factors affecting online shopping
behavior of customers in Iran, the derived reference model summarizing
antecedents of online shopping proposed by Change et al. was used as basis.
As the antecedents collected in Change et al. model are taken from
different studies performed in different contexts, it was mandatory to
extract the effective factors in Iran context. Solicitation of the factors
is done through expert judgment methodology. The result is the set of
localized antecedents of customers’ online shopping behavior in Iran.
In the second phase, the importance of identified factors was investigated
via analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The hierarchic structure needed in
AHP was achieved based on categories of Change et al. model and the
elicited factors in identifying phase. To examine the importance of
identified factor thoroughly from different perspective, online customers,
virtual store managers and academic experts were contributed in this
investigation. An online survey based on pair-wise comparison of AHP was
designed. 220 online customers, 9 virtual store managers and 10 academic
experts judged the relative importance of each criteria in online shopping
hierarchy. To obtain aggregated prioritization, representative of three
corresponding groups preferences and not losing the preferences of each of
decision makers, two level of aggregation utilized based on techniques of
group analytical hierarchy process. The first step of aggregation was
performed inside each group of decision makers by applying aggregating
individual judgments (AIJ). In the second step, overall preferences
achieved through aggregating the relative and absolute importance (local
and global rating) of counterpart nodes in three online shopping
hierarchies. The results of aggregation enabled us to discuss the
importance of online shopping antecedents according to the three groups of
decision makers. Furthermore, it facilitates comparing the preferences of
three groups. At the end the overall prioritization of localized
antecedents of online shopping is proposed that can improves our
understanding of Iranian online customer behavior.