GreenBook, The Guide for Buyers of Marketing Research.

A research method that can be done both in an interview setting and online, it solves the "say-do gap", which is the disconnect between what people 'say' they are going to do and what they 'actually' do. The biggest brand challenge for Marketers is knowing what customers truly value in a product or service. A conventional approach is to use tracking surveys with predetermined lists of attributes that may or may not include those that people deem important. We have taken a validated interview technique that originated in clinical psychology and adapted it for use in market research. People organize their experiences with the world into conceptual classifications that can be differentiated and described using 'attributes' of those classifications. Going beyond the typical 'just ask' model, the AET is an implicit measure to get at the relevant attributes by simply asking people to compare triads of products (or brands), and tell us what make two similar and the third different. This allows us to bypass the usual biases that are present when directly asking people what is important to them, and leverages the real-life comparative nature of human decision making processes.