The behavioral analysis of choice difficulty states during clothing online shopping
International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology
ISSN: 0955-6222
Article publication date: 18 November 2020
Issue publication date: 1 July 2021
Abstract
Purpose
Choice overload in e-commerce induces choice difficulty, which is detrimental to shopping decision-making. The purpose of this paper is to provide relatively simple and effective methods and indicators to detect and assess the choice difficulty states of customers during clothing online shopping.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to find out the behavioral performance of choice difficulty states during clothing online shopping, the authors performed the following steps: at first, the authors conducted an experiment to record the videos of the purchasing process during clothing online shopping. Then, the authors carried out the behavioral analysis of customers, correlating each behavioral index to choice difficulty states.
Findings
The results of the behavioral analysis in this study have indicated that three types of behavior were significantly correlated to the choice difficulty states of customers.
Practical implications
It is expected that it would be possible to use the threshold values of behavioral indicators to determine whether and when the customer is suffering from choice phobia disorder. Based on the findings, a recommender system with timely interventions to help customers with choice difficulty to make shopping decisions will be developed in the future.
Originality/value
This is the first reported study that explores the possibility of using behavioral indicators to detect choice difficulty, which will remain helpful to the scientific community to start further customer-centered research work and development of clothing online shopping.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the participants of the experiments. This study was partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 51905175), the Shanghai Pujiang Program (2019PJC021), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (nos. 50321171922001 and 2232018D3-27) and the Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of integration of healthy smart kitchen system (no. 2014E10014).
Citation
Chen, Y. and Yang, Z. (2021), "The behavioral analysis of choice difficulty states during clothing online shopping", International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 577-589. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCST-12-2019-0189
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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