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MaxDiff

Do you measure consumer preference or importance for brands, concepts or attributes? Have you ever reviewed attribute ratings data and wished there were more differentiation?

If so, MRSI can use Maximum Difference Scaling (MaxDiff) to help you determine what attributes or items are most important or most preferred among consumers with more clarity and ease of use than traditional ratings.

Typically, MaxDiff estimates importance scores for approximately 15-40 items, although more could be accommodated.

Respondents are shown various subsets of items and asked which is most and least important. Each respondent completes 10-15 groups of questions where each group contains a different subset of items. Responses to these questions are analyzed using Hierarchical Bayes (HB) techniques to calculate importance scores at the individual respondent level.

Research shows MaxDiff scores provide greater discrimination among items and between respondents on items than standard rating scales and results also parallel traditional marketing research methods.

MaxDiff is similar to conjoint analysis, but it is:

  • Applicable to a wider range of research situations
  • Easier for both researchers and respondents

Plus, the clarity of your results is better using MaxDiff since the technique more clearly identifies most and least important items. This best-worst task is not only easy for respondents, but it also eliminates scale bias, making MaxDiff ideal for multicultural research and segmentation research.

MaxDiff's powerful design capabilities can also be applied in developing sequential monadic designs for concept rotation. Designs can effectively be created for virtually any number of items while simultaneously balancing sample size by concept, concept pairs and order of concept exposure.

Contact MRSI for more information on MaxDiff today!

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