Identifying, measuring and analysing multidimensional attributes for design and redesign consideration

It is clearly not enough in product research to show that people prefer one product to another, but one must also show what attributes of the product cause them to prefer it. Saaty’s Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is an appropriate method for measuring and analysing multidimensional attributes for design and redesign considerations. However, it is not reasonable to expect that consumers are able and willing pairwise to compare attributes, as Saaty’s method assumes. A methodology is proposed for transforming rank ordered data into pairwise comparison matrices, so that AHP can be used for measuring consumer preferences. The methodology is applied to the design of milk containers.