Multi-Criteria Evaluation of Mobile Fitness Applications During COVID-19 Pandemic Based on AHP

Abstract

Fitness centers have been among the first businesses affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. During and after the Covid 19 period, people who find it dangerous to go to fitness centers have turned to technology-oriented alternatives. This situation has increased the diversity of mobile applications within the scope of fitness applications and increased the usage rates of these mobile applications. It is clear that with the COVID 19 pandemic, both users' choices for sports services and selection criteria for them have changed. During the pandemic, there has been a transition from traditional fitness rooms to virtual fitness studios. People have started to rapidly adopt these technology-oriented alternatives around the world, and there has been an increase in the download and use of these mobile fitness applications. However, there are many alternatives of fitness-related applications for the users. In this study, making the most effective selection among the alternatives in mobile applications where there are conflicting criteria for users and identifying customer-oriented platform development proposals in terms of service providers are aimed to contribute to the relevant literature. The study proposes an Analytic Hierarchy Process model, one of the Multi-criteria Decision Making approaches, for the selection of mobile fitness application alternatives where there are more than one alternative with more than one criterion and these criteria conflict with each other.