Good article at the New York Times describing the research of one of my marketing professors, Ely Dahan, using trading simulations to determine consumer preferences for features of goods or services.
“The closing prices were generally consistent both with consumer sentiments culled from more traditional market research and with previous trading experiments at M.I.T. In just minutes, for example, the trading echoed the disappointment with the Aztek and enthusiasm for the MDX demonstrated by car buyers over the last year. ‘General Motors might have been able to save itself a lot of pain if it had run trading like this a couple of years ago,’ Professor Dahan said.”