We ran an online focus group of hobbyist growers to identify 10
attributes that were important to their buying decisions. These
were used to create two experimental designs of 29 choice sets
each, one focussing on physical characteristics of the flower (e.g.
colour, shape) and the second on general plant characteristics
(e.g. species or hybrid, rarity in trade) of orchid plants. We used
an orthogonal design to ensure that there was statistically no correlation
between attributes, and each experiment was split into
three blocks (Hensher et al., 2005). We used these designs to survey
103 randomly selected visitors to the 2012 UK Peterborough
International Orchid Show. Feedback on survey design, attributes
and levels was gathered following each survey.