Home / Featured / How We Decide What Knife to Buy: SURVEY RESULTS

How We Decide What Knife to Buy: SURVEY RESULTS

March 10, 2016
Buying Criteria

KnifeNews Ultimate Folder Survey Results
Part 10: Buying Criteria
Brought to you by BladeHQ

Part 1: Lock Preferences on Folding Knives
Part 2: Favorite Knife Handle Materials
Part 3: Lanyard or No Lanyard?
Part 4: Price?
Part 5: Tip Up or Tip Down Carry?
Part 6: Choil or No Choil?
Part 7: Preferred Opening Mechanisms
Part 8: The Blade
Part 9: Steel Type

The final installment of the Ultimate Folder Survey is also the most revealing. How do we decide what folder to buy? To help answer that questions we asked our readers to rank the importance of factors they use to guide their purchasing decisions. With 13 different criteria to rank there were almost as many possible ways to answer the question (over 6 Billion) as there are people on the earth. The ranking below is a collective view of all the responses and provides an indication of the importance of priorities relative to one another.

This survey question was optional because not everyone could take the time to rank their specific priorities. Still, 1,039 respondents of the 1,326 who completed the survey chose to answer the question. To reduce bias, the options were presented to each respondent in random order by the survey software.

Rank: #1 (the most important criteria) to #13 (the least important criteria) based on the Score

Score: Based on the % of respondents who ranked the criteria as one of the 3 most important factors vs those who ranked the criteria as one of the 3 least important factors

Top 3: % of respondents who ranked the criteria as one of the 3 most important when deciding what folding knife to buy

Bottom 3: % of respondents who ranked the criteria as one of the 3 least important when deciding what folding knife to buy

IMPORTANCE 

RankCriteriaScoreTop 3Bottom 3
1Brand I Trust14746%12%
2Steel Type14342%9%
3Price9140%19%
4Appearance7434%17%
5Blade Shape5623%10%
6Lock Type2620%14%
7Opener2220%15%
8Blade Length1318%15%
9Handle Material-568%21%
10'Made In' Country-8721%41%
11Blade Grind-958%30%
12Clip Orientation-15212%47%
13Weight-1828%50%

Knife featured in image: CRKT Burnley Grid Squid

Related Items
Join knife companies and subscribe to the KnifeNews email.
They wouldn't subscribe
if it wasn't awesome.
(No spam, only great content)