Review of Best-Worst Scaling Method: A New Method over other Scales in Marketing Research

Abstract

The traditional approach is to quantify key factors in marketing research through
the use of universal rating scales. However, the use of rating scales does not always lead to
good findings because of various response style biases such as social desirability bias,
acquiescence bias, and extreme response bias. The Best-Worst scaling approach may be a
method to overcome these problems by asking respondents to make trade-offs among the
variables being assessed. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the theoretical and
statistical underpinnings of BWS and a step-by-step managerially usable method which
requires not much of training, statistical skills, or special software. The paper also reviews
on the limitation of this technique and applications of the approach.