Consumer Preference Elicitation Methods in Food Markets

Consumer preference elicitation methods serve as vital tools for uncovering the values, priorities and trade-offs that drive food purchase decisions. These approaches range from discrete choice experiments, which present respondents with competing product bundles, to best–worst scaling, which asks individuals to nominate the most and least important attributes within a set. Ranking techniques, such as select-and-rank, allow for a straightforward ordering of brands or features by preference intensity. Conjoint analysis integrates attribute combinations to simulate realistic market scenarios, while adaptive methods tailor question sets to each respondent’s earlier answers, improving efficiency and precision. Collectively, these methods facilitate segmentation of consumers based on taste, sustainability concerns, cost sensitivity and convenience, supporting targeted product development, marketing strategies and policy interventions. Their global application spans online and brick-and-mortar retail, emerging markets and high-income economies, and addresses issues from nutritional quality to environmental impact, thereby offering practical insights for producers, retailers and regulators.

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Consumer Preference Elicitation Methods in Food Markets publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in consumer preference elicitation methods in food markets across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Discrete choice experiment: A survey-based method presenting respondents with alternative product or policy bundles to infer the relative utility of each attribute.

Best–worst scaling: A ranking technique where participants identify the most and least important items within attribute sets, enhancing discrimination among preferences.

Select-and-rank: A two-stage approach in which individuals first choose a subset of options and then order them by preference intensity to capture fine-grained ranking data.

References

1. Exploring consumer segments for online food provisioning services: Online supermarkets vs. alternative food networks. Sustainable Production and Consumption (2024).
2. Identifying key attributes in sustainable food choices: An analysis using the food values framework. Journal of Cleaner Production (2023).
3. Empirical validation of a new technique (‘select-and-rank’) to measure brand preference. Journal of Brand Management (2025).