SMRT stands for "Sawtooth Software Market Research Tools" and is a separate program from the SSI Web system. The SMRT Market Simulator is used for estimating the likely acceptance or interest in different product concepts defined using the attributes and levels included in your conjoint analysis study. You install SMRT separately from the CD-ROM or from our website.
SMRT was released as a software system prior to SSI Web. It is our older Windows-based software for conducting ACA, CBC and traditional conjoint (CVA) analysis. The system includes market simulation capabilities (supporting all three of our conjoint approaches) and additional tools for data management and analyzing CBC data, including Counts, logit analysis, and latent class estimation. However, SMRT cannot create web-based projects. Interviewing with SMRT is done via floppy disks, from a hard drive on a local or networked machine, or via paper-and-pencil (in the case of CBC and CVA).
When the internet increased in popularity for market research interviewing, Sawtooth Software created a new platform for Web-based surveys called SSI Web rather than try to retrofit the older SMRT platform for web-based interviewing. Since the market simulator (and other analytical tools for CBC) already existed under SMRT, Sawtooth Software elected not to rebuild those same tools within the new SSI Web platform.
The SMRT platform can import data and utility runs developed within the SSI Web system. You can also export segmentation data from SSI Web to a text-only format and import those data into SMRT for segmentation purposes. When you analyze data using SMRT, you need to create a new project within the SMRT software system. You may store this new project in the same folder as your SSI Web project, or you may install it in a separate folder.
SSI Web and SMRT are independent software systems, but they can "speak" to one another through Import, Export and Merge processes.
A special version of SMRT may be installed by clients (the Client Conjoint Simulator). This way, clients can perform market simulations independent of consultants.
Sawtooth Software also has a web-based marketing simulator, if you need a less feature-filled and more user-friendly market simulator than SMRT.
