The behavioral analysis of choice difficulty states during clothing online shopping

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.