Patent ID: 8533147

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a server, a plurality of expert identified deal attributes; presenting a conjoint analysis questionnaire for input by one or more respondents, wherein the conjoint analysis questionnaire includes questions based on the plurality of expert identified deal attributes; receiving, at the server, responses of the one or more respondents to the conjoint analysis questionnaire; defining an expert reasoning model based on the responses of the one or more respondents to the conjoint analysis questionnaire; accessing historical deal information of one or more deals, the historical deal information including one or more deals, each deal including a plurality of expert identified deal attributes and a part-worth associated with each of the deal attributes; and validating the expert reasoning model based on the historical deal information, wherein said conjoint analysis questionnaire, comprises: presenting one or more deal attribute rating questions to prompt the respondent to assign importance levels to the plurality of expert identified deal attributes; selecting a predetermined number of critical deal attributes from the plurality of expert identified deal attributes, based on responses to the one or more deal attribute rating questions; presenting one or more trade-off questions based on the selected critical deal attributes; and presenting one or more calibration questions, to prompt the respondent to provide a scaling factor.