Getting Started with Conjoint Analysis

by Bryan K. Orme

Ask people what they want, and they say, “the best of everything.” Ask them what they’d like to spend, and they say, “as little as possible.” Assessing consumer preferences and willingness to pay through direct rating scales, with separate questions about product features and prices, often fails to capture the trade-offs that underlie consumer choice.

Conjoint analysis goes beyond simple surveys, providing a more realistic approach to understanding consumer attitudes, opinions, and behavior. Introduced as a fundamental measurement method more than forty years ago, conjoint analysis presents combinations of features or attributes in product profiles and asks people to rank or rate or to make choices among them.

(210 pp., paperback, ISBN 978-0-9727297-7-2; 2010)