New Design of Choice Sets for Choice-based Conjoint Analysis

Abstract

This article is concerned with choice-based conjoint analysis versus rating-based and ranking-based conjoint analysis. Choice-based conjoint analysis has a definite advantage in that the respondent’s task of choosing the most preferred profile from several competing profiles adequately mimics consumer marketplace behavior. It is crucial to design the choice sets appropriate for the choice-based conjoint. Thus, this article suggests a new method to design the choice sets that are well-balanced. It augments the balanced incomplete block design and then obtains the dual design of the result to accommodate various numbers of profiles. In consequence, the choice sets designed by the new method have the desirable characteristics that each profile is presented to the same number of respondents, and pairs of any two distinct profiles occur together in the same number of choice sets. The balancing of the design increases the efficiency of the conjoint analysis. In addition, the pair-comparison scheme can improve the quality of data through the identification of contradictory responses.