Patent ID: 8620717

Claim:
A computer implemented method for determining a singular impact of a base criterion on a product comprising: receiving, at a server computing system, an instruction selecting the base criterion and a different trade criterion from a plurality of criteria, the plurality of criteria selected from criteria for the product; receiving, at the server computing system, an instruction selecting a starting alternative and a target alternative; receiving, at the server computing system, a plurality of criteria weights including a weight for each of the plurality of criterion for the product, each criteria weight indicating a relative importance of the product criteria in a trade-off decision relative to the importance of different other ones of the plurality of product criteria; at the server computing system, creating a series of virtual alternatives, initially based on the starting alternative, by sequentially eliminating an impact of each non-selected criteria from the plurality of criteria, the impact being eliminated by equalizing the values for each of the non-selected criteria; at the server computing system, comparing a final virtual alternative having the impact of each non-selected criteria eliminated to the target alternative; and at the server computing system, determining, the singular impact of the base criterion based on a difference between the final virtual alternative and the target alternative; wherein the base criterion is weighted using a base criterion weight that is multiplied by the base criterion value to generate a weighted base criterion and other criterion are weighted by other criterion weights to reflect a user's preference for the base criterion relative to other criteria.