Determining and Comparing the Effective Criteria on the Selection of Wood Products among Income Categories at Gorgan

Acquiring of customers satisfaction is an important objective for manufacturers. Determining the factors affecting consumer choice of wood products is important in deciding the competition level and judging the market status. Besides determining and rating the consumption criteria using Analytical Hierarchy Process in 2010 the study can be guide for both policymakers and inventors in this industry. Consumption criteria for wood products were determined on the basis of opinions of experts, consumers, sale agencies and academic experts, and then were categorized in three classes of Economic, Technical and Consumption each of them including eight sub-criteria. The data gathered from 144 citizens of Gorgan were compared statistically with SPSS package after being rated as income quarters using Analytical Hierarchy Process technique of Expert Choice software. The results showed that, considering the economic criteria, as the consumers income decreases, the product price becomes more important. Among the technical criteria, product design and product durability are the most important for high-income quarter and other quarters, respectively. The analysis of consumption criteria revealed that convenience is the most important for the rich and decrease in preference with reduction of income. For maid-income clan color and appearance are important. Among the criteria, the economic ones are the most influenced in purchasing wood products. While for the high-income clan, technical criteria are of high importance and moving towards low-income clan reduces its importance and makes the consumption criteria more important.