Understanding consumers' preferences for dental service.

Previous researchers typically have used attitude and opinion surveys to investigate consumers' perceived importance of dental services attributes. These approaches do not require consumers to trade-off among different attributes, however. The authors use conjoint analysis to analyze consumers' preferences for dental services described by a set of 24 attributes, examining the relative importance as well as the trade-off among these attributes. They also illustrate how dental care providers can use the results from conjoint analysis to tailor their offerings to meet the needs of different segments.