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| Reviewed: |
Jun 14, 2007 by Business Editorial Board |
| Overview: |
This is an online exercise to demonstrate the use of conjoint analysis for product design. The example used is the design of a movie theatre and the module computes part worth utilities for the different attributes (price, line of sight, seat comfort, A/V quality, snacks) based upon respondents ranking of various attribute ombinations. Primary use would be in a graduate level course in marketing research. It could also be used to demonstrate the technique in an UG MR course. |
| Learning Goals: |
To provide insight into how individuals make trade-offs between various product
attributes.
To show the relative importance of each attribute based upon choices among attribute combinations.
To demonstrate the use of conjoint analysis for product design. |
| Target Student Population: |
Graduate level students enrolled in a marketing research course. It might be useful to demonstrate conjoint analysis for UG marketing majors. However, in the latter case, one might be inclined to treat the actual computations as a black box" process. |
| Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills: |
Basic understanding consumer behavior and of regression analysis. |
| Type of Material: |
Simulation |
| Recommended Uses: |
Both online and traditional courses can benefit from the exercise. Prior to assignment, readings or lecture corresponding to conjoint analysis (theory, mathematical models) would be helpful; requiring a short paper that summarizes what students learned from the attribute and part worth information would be beneficial as well. While the exercise is probably best used as an out-of-class assignment, the sorting task can easily be accomplished within a 10 minute time frame. Thus the exercise could be incorporated into a classroom setting if students have ready access to wireless laptops, or a computer lab with internet |
| Technical Requirements: |
Updated internet browser, java 1.1 plug-in, and 800 x 600 or better resolution. Importantly, the module also provides links (in separate windows)to help users that don't meet these requirements. |
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| Strengths: |
Excellent choice of product as the basis of the exercise. The vast majority of students should be familiar with the various forms of movie theater attributes used in the exercise. The sorting process is rather fun to complete, and can easily be finished within a 5 - 10 minute time frame. The design of the module is technically sound and the ranking task is easy from a mechanical standpoint.
The module is cleverly designed - two of the attributes (seat comfort and A/V)
are actually further sub-divided in the conjoint design (seat size, cup holder and screen size, sound quality). This provides opportunity for instructors to show the subtle nuances of the technique. |
| Concerns: |
A minor concern is that the exercise forces students to use all five attributes, rather than allowing them to choose only those truly influence their choice.
In addition, the module does not provide any indication of the limitations of the specific design (fractional) or the conjoint method in general. References to additional readings might be useful in this regard. |
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Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool |
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| Strengths: |
A very effective pedagogical device since it allows subjects to validate their own preference structures for a commonly bought product. Separate exercises can be developed to demonstrate appplications such as market share forecasts, product design, segmentation, and so forth. Students are frequently intimidated
by statistics, and the more advanced the process, the greater the level of intimidation. A key benefit of the exercise is the presentation of conjoint analysis in a user friendly, non-intimidating, easy to understand, involving, interactive format. However, to achieve the maximum value from this exercise as
a teaching tool, instructors should require that students record their results, interpret them careflly, and answer the questions found at the end of the exercise. In fact, some instructors may wish to be more explicit as to their
expectations for question #1, perhaps including the requirement that students use the advanced interpretation section to cacluate the dollar value of one or more attributes. |
| Concerns: |
As with all conjoint exercises, the limitation is that it is cognitively demanding to rank all the alternatives. In addition, a fractional design may sometimes lead to slight discrepancies (in utility calculations) when
interaction effects are present. One way to check for this is to ask students to divide 100 points among the attributes before they complete the conjoint tasks.
Subsequent comparison with the part worths derived from the module provide room for discussion into decision heuristics and methods. |
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Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty |
| Rating: |
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| Strengths: |
This module does an excellent job of helping students understand one of the most
managerially relevant marketing methods. While it is easy to use, instructors must be well prepared to answer questions about how part worth utilities are derived - dummy variable regression would probably work well for this purpose.
The exercise itself is extremely easy to use; the sorting task instructions are well-written and the output is nicely arranged. The interpretation instructions (as well as graphs illustrating part worth values at various variable levels) should be very helpful in facilitating student understanding of the potentially difficult to comprehend "part worth" concept while the "advanced interpretation"
section is also quite useful as it attempts to illustrate how conjoint analysis part worth results can be used to calculate the "value" of a particular attribute. |
| Concerns: |
As the exercise lacks an "export results" or "save" function, students are forced to cut and paste their results from the web page into a word processing document should they need to record the results of the attribute and part worth calculations. While this is a minor inconvenience, should students accidently
hit the "back" button on their browser before accomplishing their cut and paste, the results will disappear permanently, as clicking the forward button on the browser merely brings up the default web page. |
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| Other Issues and Comments: |
Visiting the following webpage allows instructors to download the Java source code for both the movie theater and airline conjoint analysis exercise.
Obtaining the open source code would enable interested instructors to customize a new conjoint analysis sorting process in terms of the type of product, attributes, and attribute levels. To access the source code, or the alternate conjoint analysis exercise, visit:
http://elab.vanderbilt.edu/virtuallab/exercises/index.htm
By aggregating the results of offline exercises conducted by the class, instructors can show how conjoint analysis can be used to map market-product structures based on preference data and prepare market share forecasts for new product concepts. |
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