Prioritization of Dimensions of Online Trust Using Analytical Hierarchy Approach

Abstract

In the past two decades, the e-commerce industry has grown exponentially. With new customers being on board everyday, understanding customer behavior has become more relevant than ever before. Trust is a vital aspect in the online shopping experience as it significantly influences consumer behavior, including the selection of e-commerce brands. Thorough literature review has yielded three dimensions of online trust, that is, ability, benevolence, and integrity, but no literature was found on whether there could be any prioritization among the three dimensions. This study used confirmatory factor analysis to verify the predefined scale of dimensions of online trust and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique to prioritize and solve a problem that required the multi-criteria decision making. The seminal contribution of this paper is ranking the three dimensions of online trust as identified in literature. The results affirmed that ability is the top ranked dimension of online trust for e-commerce brands that drives online shoppers followed by benevolence and integrity.