Attribute Testing

A quantitative market research technique in which respondents are asked to rate a detailed list of product or category attributes on one or more types of scales such as relative importance, current performance, current satisfaction with a particular product or service, for the purpose of ascertaining customer preferences for some attributes over others, to help guide the design and development process. Great care and rigor should be taken in the development of the list of attributes, and it must be neither too long for the respondent to answer comfortably or too short such that it lumps too many ideas together at too high a level.