A method of providing item recommendations, wherein an item is an existing product and/or an existing service, the method comprising:
- generating a set of stimuli for a first item type, said generating comprising:
- identifying a first plurality of items, comprising a plurality of actual products or services, corresponding to the first item type;
- identifying a first set of attributes associated with the first item type;
- identifying levels corresponding to at least a portion of the first set of attributes for the first plurality of items;
- grouping items in the first plurality of items into a plurality of subsets of items according to one or more attributes and/or levels;
- selecting from a given subset of items a representative item to be used as user stimuli;
- generating a plurality of utility functions in which a given attribute in the first set of attributes is associated with a weighting indicating a relative importance of given attribute to a respective simulated consumer, wherein generating the plurality of utility functions is performed using at least one or more of the following:
- random generation of vectors of utility weighting coefficients, or
- vectors of attributes of at least a portion of the items in the first plurality of items, or
- sales data for at least a portion of the items in the first plurality of items;
- selecting a first set of items to be presented to a user, the first set including representative items from respective subsets of items;
- causing the first set of items to be presented to a user;
- receiving an indication from the user as to:
- which item in the first set of items is a most preferred item, or
- which item in the first set of items is a least preferred item, or
- which item in the first set of items is a most preferred item and which item in the first set of items is a least preferred item;
- using adaptive best-worst conjoint and/or conjoint adaptive ranking to adaptively select a second set of items to be presented to a user;
- receiving an indication from the user as to:
- which item in the second set of items is a most preferred item, or
- which item in the second set of items is a least preferred item, or
- which item in the second set of items is the most preferred item and which item in the second set of items is the least preferred item;
- based at least in part on the received user indications, selecting a utility function from the plurality of utility functions;
- generating respective ranking scores for some or all of the first plurality of items using the selected utility function;
- providing for display to the user ranking information for a plurality of items in the first plurality of items based at least in part on the ranking scores.