2. Gathering customer preferences

The aim is to create a situation that will lead consumers to reveal their choices and preferences, for different product configurations (as for measuring perceptions, see the sheet "Integrating user perceptions into product design" [FIC 1119] ). You therefore need to carry out a survey, which can be administered on paper, on a computer, or over the Internet. There are various experimental protocols for getting respondents to reveal their trade-offs:

• Direct scoring of configuration preference on a scale (see Figure 1). This...