title: Exploring key factors in online shopping with a hybrid model.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Nowadays, the web increasingly influences retail sales. An in-depth analysis of consumer decision-making in the context of e-business has become an important issue for internet vendors. However, factors affecting e-business are complicated and intertwined.
  
  
  METHODS
  To stimulate online sales, understanding key influential factors and causal relationships among the factors is important. To gain more insights into this issue, this paper introduces a hybrid method, which combines the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) with the analytic network process, called DANP method, to find out the driving factors that influence the online business mostly.
  
  
  RESULTS
  By DEMATEL approach the causal graph showed that "online service" dimension has the highest degree of direct impact on other dimensions; thus, the internet vendor is suggested to made strong efforts on service quality throughout the online shopping process.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In addition, the study adopted DANP to measure the importance of key factors, among which "transaction security" proves to be the most important criterion. Hence, transaction security should be treated with top priority to boost the online businesses. From our study with DANP approach, the comprehensive information can be visually detected so that the decision makers can spotlight on the root causes to develop effectual actions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Industrial Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, 106 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hsiao-Ming
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Service Industries and Management, Minghsin University of Science Technology, Hsinchu, 304 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chia-Huei
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, 201306 China.|Zhongshan Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Zhongshan, Guangdong 528402 China.|Law School, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071 China.|School of Business, Dalian University of Technology, Panjin, 124221 China.
authors.forename: Sang-Bing
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Tsai
authors.affiliation: Business School, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071 China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Zhongshan Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Zhongshan, Guangdong 528402 China.
authors.forename: Jiangtao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, 201306 China.
authors.forename: Yuxiang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zheng
keywords: Analytic network process (ANP); DEMATEL-based ANP (DANP); E-business; Management; Online shopping; Service quality