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Determining strategies for increasing loyalty of a population to an entity

  • US 8,301,482 B2
  • Filed: 10/26/2007
  • Issued: 10/30/2012
  • Est. Priority Date: 08/25/2003
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A method for determining information related to a population'"'"'s perception of an object, comprising performing the following steps by computational equipment:

  • obtaining interview data for conducting an interview session with each of one or more respondents indicative of the population, wherein the interview sessions are for determining perceptions of the object by the respondents, the interview data substantially defining how the interview sessions are conducted;

    conducting the interview sessions with each of the respondents;

    wherein for each of the respondents, the corresponding interview session is interactive with the respondent for obtaining responsive data related to the respondent'"'"'s perception of the object, wherein the respondent is presented with each of;

    (i) a first request for a first characteristic of the object that the respondent perceives as more positive than another characteristic of the object;

    (ii) a second request for a second characteristic of the object that the respondent perceives as more negative than another characteristic of the object;

    storing the responsive data obtained from the respondents, said responsive data including responses to each of;

    the requests of (i) and (ii);

    coding said stored responsive data using a plurality of code categories, each category for identifying respondent responses in the responsive data having a common semantic content that is associated with the category;

    first determining, for each category of at least some of the plurality of code categories, a corresponding importance data indicative of an importance of the category, wherein the corresponding importance data includes a result of a function that is non-decreasing in a number of respondent responses in the category, wherein the result is dependent upon a number of the respondent responses in the category obtained from both the first and second requests;

    second determining, for each category (C) of the at least some of the code categories (CC), a corresponding belief value indicative of a perception of a degree of favorableness, by the respondents, of the category C as applied to the object;

    wherein each of the belief values (BV) includes a result that is;

    (a) dependent upon a corresponding number, N, of responses to the first request, in the corresponding category for the belief value BV, and (b) dependent upon a corresponding number, M, responses to the first request for another of the categories CC whose respondent responses include the respondent responses of the corresponding category to which the belief value BV corresponds, wherein the dependency of the belief value BV on M is inverse to the dependency of the belief value BV on N;

    wherein for each of the belief values, the corresponding result therefor is obtained from a function that is non-decreasing as the number, N, of respondent responses increases for the belief values; and

    identifying a first category of the categories CC for improving the first category, as related to the object, to thereby establish a more favorable perception of the object, or a related object, by the population;

    wherein the identification of the first category is;

    dependent upon the importance data of the first category, and dependent upon the belief value for the first category;

    wherein for performing the step of identifying, a step of ranking the categories CC is performed for identifying for the first category; and

    wherein in performing the step of ranking, when at least one category of the categories CC has a first belief value that is indicative of a lower perception of object favorableness than a second belief value for a second of the categories CC, the first belief value influences the ranking of the at least one category more for identifying the at least one category as the first category, than the second belief value influences the ranking of the second category for identifying the second category as the first category.

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