Primary alkaline batteries still account for the vast majority of battery sales in the US. According to the test standards of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), primary alkaline cell longevity performance is intended to be measured by discharging individual cells under specific load and duty cycle conditions to prescribed cutoff voltages. However, market research studies indicate that greater than 90% of battery-driven devices in the US require more than 1 cell, in electronic series configuration, to function. Thus, the analysis of primary alkaline battery performance in multiple-cell configuration will yield results that are far closer to the battery performance observed in actual devices and, therefore, is more consumer relevant. Focusing on AA size batteries, multiple cells discharged in series configuration demonstrated consistently lower cell performance (measured in service hours) vs single cells discharged under similar load and duty cycle conditions. The magnitude of decrease in performance for any battery design was highly related to the performance variability exhibited in single cell performance testing. Additional factors that influenced the lower performance observed in multiple-cell testing included the number of cells in series, discharge load magnitude, load type, endpoint voltage and battery design characteristics such as rate of increase of polarization during discharge. The relative importance of these factors to multiple-cell performance was quantified along with consideration of the deficiencies of reporting primary battery performance based on single-cell performance testing.