Probabilistic Polyhedral Methods for Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis: Theory and Application

  • Authors:
  • Olivier Toubia;John Hauser;Rosanna Garcia

  • Affiliations:
  • Columbia Business School, Columbia University, 522 Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, New York 10027;MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 40-179, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142;College of Business Administration, Northeastern University, 202 HA, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

  • Venue:
  • Marketing Science
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Polyhedral methods for choice-based conjoint analysis provide a means to adapt choice-based questions at the individual-respondent level and provide an alternative means to estimate partworths when there are relatively few questions per respondent, as in a Web-based questionnaire. However, these methods are deterministic and are susceptible to the propagation of response errors. They also assume, implicitly, a uniform prior on the partworths. In this paper we provide a probabilistic interpretation of polyhedral methods and propose improvements that incorporate response error and/or informative priors into individual-level question selection and estimation. Monte Carlo simulations suggest that response-error modeling and informative priors improve polyhedral question-selection methods in the domains where they were previously weak. A field experiment with over 2,200 leading-edge wine consumers in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand suggests that the new question-selection methods show promise relative to existing methods.