TRADE-OFF ANALYSIS

quantitative analysis of human judgement.

Consulta Research is South Africa’s most advanced specialist research company in the discipline of Trade-off Analysis (also known as Conjoint Measurement). This involves a “trade-off” exercise in which customers being surveyed are forced to make preference decisions based on the relative importance of one product or service over another. This method obliges the customers to make “real world” decisions by looking at complete descriptions of an array of products or services and then selecting those they would choose in an actual buying environment.

This valuable technique has been described as one of the most powerful, versatile and strategically important research techniques available today. Trade-off analysis actually predicts what product or service customers will choose and assesses the value they ascribe to the factors that motivated these decisions. It also allows for customers to be segmented into groups with similar values.



Companies use this technique to make predictions and to determine optimal product features. It is invaluable in:

• new product development
• pricing research
• market segmentation
• competitive positioning
• evaluating brand value

Trade-off analysis produces results which are easy for marketing managers to embrace and understand. It’s no wonder that the strong predictive power of this technique is rapidly gaining recognition as one of the most widely used market research tools available today, across a broad spectrum of products and market sectors.

At Consulta Research we’ve developed our own unique trade-off analysis interviewing methodology, designed for use in one-on-one interviews, and have been applying this methodology to major South African corporations with much success.