A respondent-friendly method of ranking long lists

This article illustrates a respondent-friendly approach to preference elicitation over large choice sets, which overcomes limitations of rating, full-list ranking, conjoint and choice-based approaches.

A respondent-friendly method of ranking long lists

James Heyman

University of St. Thomas

John Sailors

University of Scranton

Introduction

Suppose a marketing manager wants to know consumer preferences for the various ice cream flavours her company produces. Inferring preferences from sales data is problematic because not all flavours have the same distribution intensity, shelf space in the stores that carry them, or promotional support. Modelling preferences by accounting for flavour dissimilarities is complicated and time consuming, and so the manager turns to surveying consumers. A contemporary approach would be to use adaptive-choice-based conjoint or maximum difference scaling, but these require...

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