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SS Summer 2011

Call for Papers: Sawtooth Software Conference 2012

We are pleased to announce that the 2012 Sawtooth Software Conference will be held March 21-23, 2012, at Disney’s Boardwalk Inn in Orlando, Florida. This conference is held only once every 18 months. Given this location and the success of our last conference, we expect between 225 to 250 people for the 2012 conference.

Our research conference brings together some of the best minds in our industry to talk about practical issues in online interviewing and quantitative market research. It is not a sales-oriented event for our software, but a chance to exchange ideas and receive education from a variety of sources and perspectives. Papers presented at our previous Sawtooth Software Conferences are cited frequently in journal articles. We're looking for exceptionally strong papers. If you'd like to be on the program, please respond promptly (by August 12, email: bryan@sawtoothsoftware.com) with a one or two-page abstract describing your proposed paper, with special attention to the findings and what the audience will "take away" from the presentation. You must also include a 50-word description of your paper to include in the conference brochure.

We are interested in papers on a variety of subjects, including Web interviewing, market segmentation, scale development, customer satisfaction modeling, conjoint/menu/choice analysis, MaxDiff, perceptual mapping, hierarchical Bayes methods, forecasting, pricing research, market simulations, and case studies. These papers need not involve Sawtooth Software's programs or approach.

Presenters receive a complimentary conference registration. To be accepted, a paper must show promise of being sufficiently practical to be of use to the least sophisticated members of the audience, while having enough substance to be of interest to the most sophisticated members. In addition to standard presentation slides, authors are required to submit a journal-quality written paper for publication in the Conference Proceedings.

We strive for the highest quality in our conferences. If your abstract is accepted, a member of the steering committee will review early drafts of your presentation and offer suggestions. Authors are expected to consider these suggestions conscientiously and rework their presentations as needed. Sawtooth Software reserves the right to remove any author from the program or proceedings that fails to meet deadlines or produce high quality work.

Sawtooth Software Conference 2012 Steering Committee Members are:

• Ken Deal, McMaster University
• Joel Huber, Duke University
• Rich Johnson, Sawtooth Software
• David Lyon, Aurora Market Modeling
• Bryan Orme, Sawtooth Software

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MBC (Menu-Based Choice) Software in Beta

In May, we hosted 21 beta testers in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for the beta program kickoff of the new MBC Software for Menu-Based Choice. The beta period will last about 9 months. MBC is an extension of CBC methodology to handle a variety of complex multi-check/configurator choice tasks. Common applications include bundling vs. a la carte product and service configuration for restaurant menus, autos, telecom bundling, single vs. multi-drug prescription, warranties, insurance, banking options, etc.

The beta training experience was very satisfying, and as usual we had a great time interacting with our clients.

While there were a few bugs uncovered during the two days of training, our programmer (Walt Williams) has been able to act quickly to release patches that fix most of the most pressing concerns and move the software development forward.

Twenty of the 21 attendees completed a feedback questionnaire at the conclusion of the event. Here are some of the results:

Q1. How well does the MBC software meet your expectations?

Q2. Thinking about MBC-type projects that you may want to conduct for your own organization and/or for clients, which best describes how you feel about the MBC software?

We are pleased with the positive feedback, especially given that the software still had a few bugs and a few planned features had not yet been implemented.

To become a beta tester, please email bryan@sawtoothsoftware.com regarding your interest in these events. You will be placed on an email circulation list for periodic updates regarding our progress and about MBC methodology.

Beta testers are trained on the software and may use it during the beta period (expected to last until about March of 2012). Either internal or client projects may be completed.

We are continuing to polish the software and add new capabilities. Our next scheduled events for beta tester training are:

October 13-14, Park City, Utah
October 25-26, Vienna, Austria

To read preliminary documentation on the MBC software, download a PDF document at www.sawtoothsoftware.com/download/mbcbooklet.pdf.

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Report on Conjoint Analysis Usage

Thank you to those who participated in our annual customer feedback survey. This tool serves as a measuring stick for our business, and allows us to keep in touch with both the overriding sentiment and the specific ideas of customers. We learn how we can better serve you, and what we can do to improve our products.

Here are some top-line findings you may find interesting:

• 96% of respondents rated their interactions with us as either Good or Excellent.
• MaxDiff (Maximum Difference Scaling) was used by 52% of the respondents’ firms during the previous year.
• 52% of you said it would be a positive development if Sawtooth Software offered custom Javascript and Perl services for assisting with challenging SSI Web questions. 2% said it would be a negative development for you.

Of course, an important element of the annual survey is to track the usage of conjoint analysis methods. Respondents were asked how many conjoint analysis projects their firm (or department) conducted during the previous year. Then, they specified what percent of those projects utilized different conjoint-related methodologies. The vast majority of the projects employed Sawtooth Software tools, and among those projects, the percent of projects utilizing CBC, ACBC, ACA, and CVA were as follows:

Choice-based conjoint methods (CBC and ACBC) continue to take share away from ratings-based methods (ACA and CVA). In its second year of release, the use of ACBC has increased to 11% of projects. We expect that as alternative-specific designs are supported in the future version of ACBC, its use will continue to grow.

The continued dominance of choice-based methods over the last few years might lead some to wonder whether there still is a place for ratings-based conjoint methods (CVA and ACA) in our practice. What this chart doesn't show is that many researchers use multiple conjoint techniques, depending on the research situation. Although CVA (card-sort conjoint) is the oldest conjoint technique, with its roots dating back to the 70s, it can be quite useful in specific circumstances. ACA is frequently used by researchers who tend to use CBC for the majority of projects. There are some situations in which ACA's clever hybrid conjoint approach works nicely.

The application of MaxDiff methodology is also increasing. During the last year, 52% of respondents to our survey indicated that their firm had used MaxDiff during the previous year. MaxDiff was introduced as a software product in 2004, so this represents significant growth and usage.

We also asked respondents who stated that their firms had used CBC to indicate what percent of CBC projects employed different design options. The “Balanced Overlap Design” method, which forces a modest amount of level overlap into the designs, has been shown to improve measurement of interaction effects—and in practical applications with human respondents may actually result in better main effect estimates as well. If respondents tend to be applying “must-have” or “must-avoid” rules to answer CBC questionnaires, designs with level overlap have an advantage over minimal overlap designs. We are pleased to see the use of Balanced Overlap increasing, and will probably make this the default design method in the next version of CBC.

We are also pleased to see the prevalence of application of alternative-specific designs. Such designs are an excellent way to deal with studies that seem to be requiring many prohibitions. But, rather than including many prohibitions, what is often needed is to specify that certain attributes altogether only apply to certain brands or product alternatives.

Some of you who took the survey may have noticed that in addition to the options shown in Figure 3 we asked you if you had used a technique in your CBC studies called “Carroll's Mome Raths (MR) estimation method.” This was a fictional (decoy) item we added, to adjust for possible overstatement of usage by our respondents. The percent allocation for the decoy item (which was very small) was subtracted from the other items before reporting them in Figure 3. The decoy item makes reference to Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky as published in the book popularly referred to as Alice in Wonderland. The first stanza of that poem is as follows (underline added):

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

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Progress Being Made on SSI Web v8

Our biggest project in 2011 is SSI Web v8. It seems like each new upgrade of SSI Web involves acceleration in the number of changes and improvements. V8 follows in that tradition and will represent a huge step forward.

For those of you who are interested in the software development angle, we have moved SSI Web code base from VB6 to C#. This took about five months of our development time. The move to C# doesn’t directly convey big benefits to users (other than some speed improvements, such as in data export), but it will allow us to code more quickly for this and future versions of the software.

Here are some of the features we’ve already completed as we work toward the future release of SSI Web v8. These features will not be released until sometime during 2012 when SSI Web v8 is released.

Simple Cross-Tabulation Tool within Admin Module. This is not meant to replace the many fine cross-tabulation packages available for client reporting. Rather, this is to improve the Admin Module for analysts and survey administrators, to enable them to tabulate the data in a more familiar cross-tab display. V8 will offer ability to save different report specifications (e.g. specifying which variables are row variables and which variables are banners) so you can retrieve different report specs and tabulate them in realtime. The capability includes basic charts (bar and pie), and the ability to export the table contents to a .csv file. Charts are available in both the “read-only” and “read-modify” versions of the Admin Module.

Data File in .CSV Format. With v8, we will move from text-based data files to a database format, which means that each respondent record is a single row. You can open the file in programs like Excel and modify the data very easily (including deleting rows, columns, or changing specified fields/answers). SSI Web also will provide a view/edit dialog for performing these same functions. What a relief to work with this format instead of the unruly text-based (*.dat) files of previous versions of SSI Web.

Export/Manage Data Area. This area will increase your productivity by including the ability to save multiple export tables (jobs). The export process offers huge speed improvements that you will particularly notice for large data sets. Within the same job (export run), we’ve added the capability to export to multiple formats simultaneously. You also will be able to copy jobs from one study to another. The new Export area offers better filtering options, including based on respondents’ answers to questions.

Recode lists. During the export process, you may specify a new set of customized codes instead of consecutive integers starting with 1. This allows you to customize the exports better for your clients’ needs.

Tooltips. A tooltip help text or graphic can be made to appear when the respondent mouses over text or graphics. Javascript code for this functionality has been shared as a free script available on our website, but it will be integrated as a feature within v8.

Import and Export Quota Logic and Skip Patterns to a .CSV. Allows you to Q&A your skip patterns and quota logic in one document. Some users will find that they can build skip patterns faster within a program like Excel.

Using jQuery instead of MooTools. Sophisticated questionnaire programmers will be able to take advantage of the jQuery library, which is more widely used than MooTools.

Semantic Differential. This is the question type where items (objects or descriptions) are both on the left side and the right of a “grid-style” ratings question. Both radio and slider controls will be supported. Left and right-hand side items can be randomized, either as a whole or by individual rows.

We’re continuing to work on new features, such as sliders and looping. And, we will be doing a number of methodological and feature improvements for conjoint and MaxDiff. Needless to say, we are excited for what 2012 will bring for SSI Web!

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Corporate Annual Subscription License a Success

Last year, we started offering a Corporate Annual Subscription License option. Sales for this option have exceeded our expectation, and it now makes up about 1/5 of our revenues.

Some of our users have commented that they cannot believe what a give-away this license is, and are wondering when we’re going to come to our senses and terminate it. Let’s just say we don’t have any plans to do so. Even though the revenue per user plummets under this pricing approach, we value the fact that we are gaining many more users of our software.

For an annual fee of $15,400 up to 10 users at an organization may all have full access to the following Sawtooth Software tools:

• CiW – Unlimited
• CBC Web with the Advanced Design Module
• CBC/HB
• CBC/Latent Class
• Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint (ACBC)
• ACA/Web-30
• ACA/HB
• CVA/Web
• CVA/HB
• MaxDiff/Web-500
• Advanced Simulation Module
• HB-Reg
• CCEA

Annual subscription license users receive current updates and upgrades as soon as they become available.

We’re offering the subscription license option because many of you want greater access to our tools, without having to justify and manage the purchase of each new component or upgrade. It’s much easier to set a budget based on an annual license, and with that annual fee you know you have access to the latest versions of nearly every tool in Sawtooth Software’s product line.

Licenses for more than 10 users are also available at a steep discount compared to the one-time purchase prices. We will continue to sell our standard one-time purchase licenses as before, as some customers find this a more affordable way to purchase just the tools they need, for particular limited projects.

To read the details of our Annual License agreement, visit www.sawtoothsoftware.com/licenseagreement.shtml

Please call us +1 801-477-4700 or write us at support@sawtoothsoftware.com if you have questions about the annual license. For customers in Europe who work with our reseller, SKIM, please contact software@skimgroup.com.

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Sawtooth Software Has Moved

We’ve moved our offices from Sequim, Washington State to Orem, Utah. Our new physical address is:

1457 E 840 N
Orem, UT
84097-5486

Our new phone number is +1 801-477-4700.

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Panel Sample: Who We’re Using

In our latest customer feedback survey, we asked our users which Online Web Sample/Online Panels they primarily used over the last 12 months. Up to six mentions were allowed, asked in open-end format with no pre-coded responses. Sample providers who were mentioned by at least 3% of the sample in 2011 are reported below.

Percent of Respondents Using Panel/Sample Supplier in Last 12 Months
(Sorted by 2011 Results)

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#1 in Customer Satisfaction Two Years Running

For the second year in a row, Sawtooth Software was rated #1 in Overall Customer Satisfaction among Online Survey Software providers. The source is a MarketResearchCareers.com industry survey among 550 market research professionals. Among the 26 online survey software suppliers mentioned in the report, Sawtooth Software obtained the best rating in the Overall Customer Satisfaction category.

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© 2012 Sawtooth Software, Inc. All rights reserved.