Tabulating the data is going to be a pita as you say due to the nature of the survey design - and before you take that as a 'personal attack' , full disclaimer - no- I'm not an expert in market research but I do work with them and get feedback on survey design and campaigns .

It is possible to get metrics without the "a/b" (as you refer to it) style questions, however open-ended question analysis is more difficult, there are tools you can use (no idea if any of them are free) without doing that manually. if you can avoid bias (again, not an attack - coming up with questions isn't always easy) it's easier to analyze close-ended questions.