Contribution to web-based conjoint analysis for market research

The topic of this thesis is focused around the new possibilities in the field of market research opened with the advent of the internet, in particular around the use of web interfaces to perform conjoint analysis, a market research technique based on comparisons between pairs of potential product configurations to compute the perceived relative utility of each of several product design attributes. We first overview conjoint analysis and the online market research industry in general, so see how the use of the internet for this purpose can reduce the cost of these analyses in more than an order of magnitude due to a better accessibility to test customers, a cleaner and faster interface, and the possibility of reducing the number of questions necessary to compute the utility functions using an adaptive technique that generates optimal questions with dynamic web content as the test proceeds. We then study the issues related with the automation of web sites for performing this type of analyses without having to redesign the interface, with the introduction of dynamic content web technology for adaptive conjoint analysis, and with the possibilities offered by this technique towards fast segmentation of incoming customers. Finally, we report the first implementation - to the best of our knowledge - of an actual web architecture that uses a novel adaptive conjoint algorithm and automates the whole analysis setup process.

Department dc:contributor.department

Management of Technology Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Faura, Julio M. (Julio Manuel), 1970-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John R. Hauser.

• Management of Technology Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9273

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9273