Nested analytic hierarchy/network process for two-stage consumer choice issues

Abstract

Although the analytic hierarchy/network process (AHP/ANP) has been widely used in various applications, it cannot deal with the two-stage consumer choice problem caused by nests composed of correlated sub-alternatives. Note that the sub-alternatives between different nests are influenced by distinct criteria. Hence, there are global criteria that affect the choice of the nests and local criteria that affect the sub-alternatives. If the global and local criteria are independent, it is a nested AHP problem; otherwise, it is a nested ANP problem. In this paper, we proposed a nested AHP/ANP to solve the two-stage consumer choice issue, which has not been considered before. In addition, an empirical case is demonstrated to verify the proposed method and compare the results with conventional AHP/ANP.

Keywords:

• Analytic hierarchy/network process
• two-stage consumer choice problem
• global and local criteria
• nested AHP/ANP

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.