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

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.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a nested AHP/ANP method to solve the two-stage consumer choice issue and demonstrates a case study to verify the proposed method. The independence of global and local criteria determines whether it is a nested AHP problem or a nested ANP problem.