Eric Almquist and Jason Lee of Bain & Company prepared a great interactive presentation on MaxDiff Analysis for the Harvard Business Review this month. This technique is not new to us, but this Adobe presentation is great in clearly communicating the design and dynamism of this technique.
We try to find opportunities to include MaxDiff exercises in our studies that focus on consumer preference. We’ve found this technique particularly useful in segmentation studies where key drivers and motivations for behaviors are of interest.
Including a series of MaxDiff exercises adds to the overall survey length, but this analysis can be very helpful in illuminating how consumers truly prioritize attributes (or features or statements). MaxDiff exercises allow respondents to rate the importance of attributes relative to other attributes, rather than independent of them. The end product is a ranking of attributes that can be used to corroborate key insights gained from Likert scale ratings and factor analysis.
Sometimes the results simply confirm consumers’ stated preference, but often, as shown dramatically in this presentation, a re-prioritization emerges. This is a great way to include survey metrics that enable the analyst to approach the results from an additional perspective. So often, a consumer will rate multiple attributes as about equally important, and through MaxDiff analysis we can sometimes see if some differentiation underlies their response.
There’s also an entry on WikiPedia for Maxdiff, but for more information, contact us!
Leave a comment
Comments feed for this article