Multicriterial analysis in operation strategy: case study with rice purchasers of six retailer firms

Abstract

This article aims at presenting a multiple case study in which we measured the prioritization given to competitive factors by six companies that buy rice products for retailing. The multiple case study took place in six large self-service food agents that operate in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. The competition in the industry was described by a tree-like structure, which first layer includes: price, quality, variety, image, deliver and services as competitive factors. For prioritizing, we distributed relative importance between factors, with the aid of the AHP method of multicriteria decision support. Quality was prioritized in five companies. The other one prioritized variety. Internal comparisons were made with the results from second layer of the structure.