Simalto

SIMALTO – SImultaneous Multi-Attribute Trade Off – is a survey based statistical technique used in market research that helps determine how people prioritise and value alternative product and/or service options of the attributes that make up individual products or services. A particular specific application of the method is in political science. It can be applied to predicting which of the alternative combinations of optional service benefits provided by a local authority, state or national government in their annual budget would meet with the ‘maximum’ approval of a target population. SIMALTO is based on creating a matrix of the options that can combine to form the product or service. Each row of the matrix represents an attribute and the matrix columns are the various options (alternative features, levels of service, benefits) of that particular row attribute. Each option is associated with ‘cost points’ which indicates how much more or less that option costs to deliver than the other options on the matrix. The cost points may reflect the actual price in currency, say, of a consumer or industrial product option, or, more commonly in service applications, the relative costs to the supplier of delivering the different benefit options. Example SIMALTO Matrix : To improve from 8 hours service response time to 2 hours would ‘cost’ an extra 10 points. This would be twice the cost of improving from 6–10 days wait for spare parts to a 3-5 day wait. Respondents complete a series of tasks on this matrix. These may include indicating the option on each row he currently perceives he experiences in the product or service he has now and/or his perception of a rival product or service performance. But the main tasks completed on the matrix are the respondents prioritisation of the options within total ‘constrained’ budgets. The respondent is given a total number of ‘cost points’ which he allocates to the options on the matrix to ‘design’ his preferred total specification within that total given cost constraint – called his first priorities.