Commercial Use of Conjoint Analysis in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

This paper analyzes applications of conjoint analysis (CA) by marketing research institutes in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Based on a survey of 304 CA studies conducted in 2001 we show that the relevance of CA has grown immensely in the last decade and is expected to grow further. While ten years ago Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA) used to be the most often applied type of CA, today it is discrete choice CA followed by ACA and traditional CA. The main goals of CA studies are pricing, product development, customer segmentation, and brand evaluation. Moreover, two major methodological problems of CA are investigated, i.e. the application of compensatory decision models and the use of a very large number of attributes. Furthermore, we analyze the practioners' satisfaction with the methods applied and suggest opportunities for future method development.