Prioritizing factors influencing purchase intention of Indian handicraft products by tourists: an application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach

The purpose of the study is to prioritise the factors of tourists’ purchase intention of Indian handicraft products to determine which among all the selected factors is most influential in driving tourists’ intention to buy handicraft products. The study uses a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), to rank the factors of tourists’ purchase intention to buy handicraft products on a sample of 255 tourists across seven tourist destinations in a time span of 15 days during December, 2025 and January, 2026. The results revealed that hedonic value and utilitarian value are the highly prioritized factors, with shopping environment being the least prioritized one. The study offers significant insights for handicraft stakeholders to concentrate on the highly prioritized factors of tourists’ intention to buy Indian handicraft products. As previous studies have explored the factors in this context, the current study is novel in prioritizing the factors using a MCDM technique, thereby enriching the existing knowledge base. By ranking the key factors, the study contributes by enabling the industry stakeholders and policymakers to concentrate more on the highly prioritized areas.