Conjoint Analysis: an Examination of the Validity of the Self-Explicated Design in the Context of Air Travel

ABSTRACT - Conjoint analysis has received considerable academic and industry attention as a tool for measuring consumer trade-offs among different product/service attributes (Green and Wind 1973). In this paper, we examine the validity of the self-explicated design and compare it to the traditional full-profile model, which is generally recognized as a valid instrument for determining customer preferences. The full-profile model can only incorporate a maximum of six to eight attributes at any one time (Green and Srinivasan 1990). In industry applications, therefore, the self-explicated design has increasingly been used as it can incorporate up to 30 attributes.

Citation:

Jochen Wirtz and Rachel Tan Lu Pheng (2001) ,"Conjoint Analysis: an Examination of the Validity of the Self-Explicated Design in the Context of Air Travel", in AP - Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 4, eds. Paula M. Tidwell and Thomas E. Muller, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 98.

Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 4, 2001      Page 98

CONJOINT ANALYSIS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE VALIDITY OF THE SELF-EXPLICATED DESIGN IN THE CONTEXT OF AIR TRAVEL

Jochen Wirtz, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Rachel Tan Lu Pheng, National University of Singapore, Singapore

[The authors gratefully acknowledge Royston Loh for his contribution towards this research.]

ABSTRACT -

Conjoint analysis has received considerable academic and industry attention as a tool for measuring consumer trade-offs among different product/service attributes (Green and Wind 1973). In this paper, we examine the validity of the self-explicated design and compare it to the traditional full-profile model, which is generally recognized as a valid instrument for determining customer preferences. The full-profile model can only incorporate a maximum of six to eight attributes at any one time (Green and Srinivasan 1990). In industry applications, therefore, the self-explicated design has increasingly been used as it can incorporate up to 30 attributes.

The research context for this study was air travel. The findings show that the self-explicated design produced results that differ slightly from the full-profile model. Nevertheless, overall the results were still close to those of the full-profile model, suggesting that the self-explicated design may not perform as well as the full-profile design but still seems to be a sufficiently accurate research tool for determining customer preferences and market segments.

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