The aim of this work was to assess processing companies' preferences for attributes of Swiss beef. To this end,
qualitative interviews were used to derive product attributes that determine the buying decision. Through an
adaptive-choice based conjoint analysis survey and latent class analysis of choice data,we compute class prefer-
ences. Results show that there are two distinct classes. A smaller class emphasizes traceability back to the birth
farmand low producer price, a larger class focuses on environmental effects and origin. Additionallywe see that
larger companies aremore price-sensitive and smaller companies aremore sensitive to origin of the animals. The
results outlined in this paper may be used to target market segments and to derive differentiation strategies
based on product characteristics.