It has long been recognized that product or service benefits analysis may be useful in the development of marketing policy and new product/service designs (Banks, 1950). More recently, Haley (1968) suggested the use of product benefits as a basis for market segmentation. According to this view, individuals differ with regard to their evaluations of the want-satisfying attributes of products or services. For example, in the case of toothpastes some consumers may place high emphasis on a product's ability to whiten teeth while others attach greater importance to a toothpaste's decay preventativeness.

To the extent that brands are perceived to differ on valued attributes and the attributes themselves are valued differently, one can, in principle, develop market segments based on these differences. If one grants the usefulness of perceived product benefits as a basis for market segmentation (Frank, Massy, and Wind, 1972), there is still the measurement problem—how does one go about quantifying consumers’ utilities for various levels of valued product attributes?