Thirty years of conjoint analysis: Reflections and prospects

Conjoint analysis is marketers' favorite methodology for finding out how bu yers make trade-offs among competing products and suppliers. Conjoint analy sts develop and present descriptions of alternative products or services th at are prepared from fractional factorial, experimental designs. They use v arious models to infer buyers' part-worths for attribute levels, and enter the part-worths into buyer-choice simulators to predict how buyers will cho ose among products and services. Easy-to-use software has been important fo r applying these models. Thousands of applications of conjoint analysis hav e been carried out over the past three decades.