A growing number of companies have recognized the need for trade-off analysis such as discrete choice or maximum difference experiments. Discrete choice is an approach used to enable researchers to better understand, quantify, and predict consumer choice behavior.

Discrete choice experiments focus on the effects of changing certain aspects of a service or product on consumers’ choices among several competitive offerings.

Maximum difference experiments provide an alternative to rating scales, ranking, point allocation, and paired comparisons. Maximum difference results allow managers to understand not only the rank order but the distance between each of the ranked items, and can accommodate more items than a traditional ranking.

The attached white paper discusses a variety of considerations related to the benefits of conducting trade-off experiments, a summary of the approaches, and the key deliverables available through primary research. This paper provides valuable direction for firms in the initial stages of developing or reviewing their approach to this area of research.