Most of the articles we publish in this newsletter focus on the quantitative aspects of conjoint analysis. This article highlights some of the more qualitative aspects that are often inadequately treated or entirely ignored.
At Sawtooth Software, our website (www.sawtoothsoftware.com) has been invaluable both for marketing and technical support. We are taking steps to leverage the Internet and particularly email even more. Last November we launched an email newsletter to supplement this quarterly publication.
Since 1993, our CBC software for Choice-Based Conjoint has been used successfully in thousands of studies. After years of listening to our customer's research needs and by paying attention to outside experts, we recently created the Advanced Design Module for CBC. Industry experts have commented that our CBC software worked well for the kinds of studies where all attributes freely combine with one another. But they also pointed out that some research requires "alternative-specific" designs, for which our CBC package was not appropriate.
Imagine delivering a polished Windows-based market simulator to clients. Imagine that it lets you select banner points for a "cross-tab" like display, showing attribute utilities, importances, and shares of preference in separate columns for each sub-group. Imagine that it includes the new Randomized First Choice model to adjust for product similarity. Imagine that you can cut-and-paste simulation results directly to a spreadsheet. Imagine that no matter the utility estimation procedure (ACA, CVA, logit, Lclass, ICE or HB), you can use the same market simulator to analyze the results.
We have hosted the Sawtooth Software Conferences for over a decade now, with the goal of bringing academic researchers and practitioners together to discuss practical research issues. We have been pleased with the quality of the resulting papers, which have been published in a series of Proceedings. A recent book on conjoint analysis suggests that our conferences and the resulting Proceedings have had a favorable impact on the academic research community.