Understanding Key Decision Factors in Course Selection Using Choice Design (2025-US-PO-2417)

My name is Matheus Luchese Sguissardi. I'm the co-founder of Plan A Operational Excellence. It is a consultancy. We have some different trainings in our portfolio, and we always ask it ourselves, which training would be better for future students?

I decided to use a choice design platform that is available in JMP to run a survey, to conduct this over some periods of days, interviewing some respondents, and see what's happened. To better understand the preferences of potential students when choosing a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training, I conduct this training, this choice design.

The Black Belt is one of the most valuable, the most important trainings that we can find around the world. It's very, very important for different situations, mainly solving problems, tools and skills that people need nowadays.

In this study, participants were asked to choose between different training options. Each one is described by a unique combination of attributes and levels. Imagine that people had to choose between two different training options, the option A or option B, and each one was a set of different attributes. These attributes that we choose, they were five key attributes.

We had the training format being 100% in-person or 100% online, hybrid or on-demand. The price: $790, $990, $1,190. The mentoring hours: you could have unlimited mentoring hours or limited to 20 hours. The software that will be used in the training: the options were JMP, Minitab, or Excel. The certification process: it could be final exam only, final project only, or both. These five different attributes were there in the choices.

The platform was launched like this. Five attributes that can change within a choice set, two profiles per choice set. I decided to run 12 different choice sets per survey. Once I had this all set, we started collecting data.

How we collected this data? We went to the LinkedIn. In my profile, my personal profile, I scheduled 12 different surveys, each one being a specific combination that we had in our choice design. After 45 days, with more than 85 participants, we started analyzing our data and our survey, and it was possible to identify which attributes and which levels most influence decision-making.

Let's talk about the results. We have here this effect summary where we can see that the software attribute is so far more relevant than the rest of the attributes.

The training format, for example, is something that people don't... This attribute does not make any change in this decision-making for people. This is a very impressive result. We could see that software is very, very big. The effect is very big. Mentoring is the second one of our Pareto. The price is there in the middle. The certification process that we care a lot is something that people don't choose, don't use as an attribute to make their decisions.

Here in this willingness to pay that we can find in this choice design platform in JMP, we set our baseline value. What is our baseline value? Let's say it's the most simple, the most simple training, the common one that we can find a lot in the internet, for example.

You can have the on-demand format. All the videos are recorded for $790. You have only 20 hours of mentoring using Excel macros. To certify in this Black Belt course, you should just pass in a final exam. This is our baseline.

This analysis that we run here, once we have the price attribute, we can understand how much people would pay to change from this baseline to the attribute that they want. For example, just changing the baseline from on demand to hybrid format, people would pay $372 more for the training. This is a very useful insight that we have here.

When we look, the software, when people are looking this baseline here, and we change from Excel macros to JMP software, we know now that people would pay $1,000 more for the training if they had the JMP software being used during this Black Belt course. This is a very, very useful insight for us.

When we talk about certification process, they would pay $427 more just for having the project in the final certification process. This is a willingness to pay that we got here in our analysis.

This multiple choice profiler that we have here in the right side, we can choose some different options. I could put here two or three or six different options. I just chose three options. They were what is usually offered. I would like to compare this course that we usually offer against the full package. The full package is, okay, let's put everything that is best in a Six Sigma Black Belt course in a package and put the most expensive price on that.

Let's compare these options. Let's compare these two options against the full package with a discount. Let's put these attributes in a course, but let's put a discount and offering this for $790. Let's see what happens about probabilities of choices. Setting these three different packages here, we can see that the first one, people would... If you had to split these three options in a 100%, 40% of the total would be chosen. The choice will be this first one. That is what that we are offering nowadays. This is very good for us, because it tells us that we are in the right way.

The second best options, the second best choice here, was the full package with a discount. But this is a very important insight as well, because what we are usually offering, it will be more, let's say, more chosen against this full package with a discount. This is a very good insight for us.

What we can still see here in this study, is the probability scenarios. I separated here three different scenarios that we can play with this probability profiler and see what would happen changing some attributes.

Here in my left side, I have a hybrid training format, $700, unlimited mentoring, using JMP, and having only a project in the final certification process.

This is the best option for people. They chose a lot this option when they had this opportunity to choose between different attributes. We have here 91% of probability of people choosing this specific choice set here when talking about a Six Sigma Black Belt course. The worst scenario would be 100% online training with the biggest price, mentoring limited to 20 hours using Excel macros and having only a final exam.

This is a very good result for us, to us to understand what not to do, right? This is the type of the course that we will never offer, because now we know that only 36% of probability of this being chosen by people.

We have here a third scenario where we talk about the on-demand course, the biggest price, mentoring limited to 20 hours using JMP, and having a final exam only to be certified. This scenario would be, let's say, the course that the effort for our instructor's effort would be the less effort possible because all the trainings would be recorded. The price is the biggest price.

We have this mentoring being limited, and we don't have to mentor people in a project, in a real situation from different companies. The work for the instructors is much less than this one where we have the project. But even doing this, now we know after this study that the probability of this type of course being chosen is around 67%.

Conclusions of this study. The study revealed that software choice was the most influential factor in participants' decisions, with a clear preference for JMP. It was very nice because these 80 people that responded this survey, not all of them knew JMP, not all of them were my students. Random people that came to my LinkedIn and started answering the survey. This is a very interesting result when we talk about the software that can be used in Six Sigma training.

The training format was the least relevant, suggesting that delivery mode has minimal impact on perceived value. Now we know that we can offer to people different training formats offering for the same price, for example, and let's let them choose what they prefer. Let's not put this as an attribute that we could charge more for this because we know now that this is not relevant for people.

Additionally, the analysis provided quantitative insights into the financial impact of each attribute, helping guide more effective pricing strategies for future training offers.

This is the study. I would like to thank all the professionals who participated in the survey for their valuable input, as well as the colleagues and industry peers who inspired and supported the development of this study. Thank you.