AHP Example: Choose the best car for the Jones family

A public Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) decision built with decisionpoint.io: 10 criteria, 6 alternatives, and 137 pairwise judgments.

Overall ranking

  1. Odyssey Minivan — 21.9%
  2. Accord Sedan — 21.5%
  3. CR-V SUV — 16.7%
  4. Accord Hybrid — 15.0%
  5. Element SUV — 14.4%
  6. Pilot SUV — 10.6%

Criteria weights

Overall consistency ratio: 0.03 (within the 0.1 acceptability threshold).

AI-generated summary

Generated by AI from this decision's data; may not reflect the latest judgments.

Results summary

The Odyssey Minivan and Accord Sedan are effectively a dead heat, separated by only 0.4 percentage points. The Odyssey wins primarily on safety, where it delivers a 5.1 percentage point advantage, and on passenger capacity, where it leads by 2.4 percentage points. These strengths align with the family's heavy weighting toward cost considerations (51% overall) combined with meaningful weight on safety (23.4%) and capacity (21.5%). However, the Odyssey costs significantly more to purchase and maintain, trailing the Accord by 3.8 percentage points on purchase price alone and by 1.5 points on maintenance.

The Accord Sedan remains highly competitive because it delivers the cost advantages the Jones family prioritizes, even though it sacrifices the Odyssey's safety and space benefits. With such a narrow margin, the decision hinges on how much extra the family values safer, more spacious travel against the Accord's lower total cost of ownership. Check the sensitivity analysis to see whether small changes in the cost or safety weights would shift the outcome.

Sensitivity summary

Effectively a dead heat, with the Odyssey Minivan ahead by 0.4 percentage points. This is effectively a two-way contest between the Odyssey Minivan and the Accord Sedan. Almost any meaningful reweighting hands the lead to the Accord Sedan, so treat them as two finalists rather than a settled winner. The Accord pulls ahead when you increase weight on cost concerns (particularly Purchase Price or Maintenance Costs) or decrease weight on Capacity, or when you elevate Style as a priority.

Decision criteria

Alternatives

With JavaScript enabled, this page shows the full interactive decision: the hierarchy, every pairwise comparison on the Saaty 1–9 scale, consistency checking, the calculated priorities, and sensitivity analysis. New to the method? See What is the Analytic Hierarchy Process?