Kathy Jones is planning to buy a new minivan, but after narrowing her choices

down to three models (X, Y, and Z) within her price range, she is having difficulty deciding which one to buy. Kathy has compared each model against the others on the basis of four criteria: price, safety, economy, and comfort. Her comparisons are summarized as:

Price Safety

XYZ XYZ

X 1 1/4 3 X 1 1/2 3 Y417Y218 Z 1/3 1/7 1 Z 1/3 1/8 1

Economy Comfort XYZ XYZ

X 1 1/3 1/6 X 1 1/4 1/8 Y 3 1 1/3 Y 4 1 1/3 Z631Z831

Kathy wants to incorporate all of these criteria into her final decision, but not all of the criteria are equally important. The following matrix summarizes Kathy's com- parisons of the importance of the criteria:

Criteria Price Safety Economy Comfort

Price 1 1/7 1/2 1/5 Safety 7 1 4 2 Economy 2 1/4 1 1/2 Comfort 5 1/2 2 1

1. Use AHP to compute scores for each minivan on each of the four criteria and to compute weights for each of the criteria.
2. Was Kathy consistent in making pairwise comparisons?
3. Compute the weighted average score for each minivan. Based on this analysis,

which minivan should Kathy buy?