Ratings based versus choice-based latent class conjoint models - An empirical comparison

Traditional ratings- or rankings-based conjoint analysis has been very popu lar in commercial practice. Recently, the choice-based conjoint approach ha s become an attractive alternative for measuring preference structures. How ever, little is known about the extent to which both approaches produce sim ilar results or about how they compare in terms of predictive accuracy. Thi s paper presents a conceptual and empirical comparison of ratings-based and choice-based conjoint approaches. The authors add to previous empirical in vestigations by comparing both approaches with respect to differences in re lative attribute importances and predictive accuracy while controlling for task order. In particular, the authors compare segment-level (latent class) models. The results show substantial differences in the segment-level relative attr ibute importances. These results are consistent with previous research and the prominence hypothesis. At the segment and aggregate level the choice-ba sed approach clearly outperforms the ratings-based approach.