Relative Importance of Product Attributes. Consumer Decision Theories in New-Product Development

摘要

The success of a new product is closely related to the willingness of consumersto buy the product. The consumer is most likely to buy a product which fulfills the wishes and demands the consumer imposes on the product. These wishes and demands are fulfilled by means of the attributes of the product. The main purpose of the study is to determine the effect of an attribute on the preference of a product. In order to give some guidelines to the new-product development process. The approach most often used to determine the effect of an attribute (level) on the preference is conjoint analysis. In conjoint analysis, the effect of an attribute, at the individual level, is reflected in the sensitivity. The individual-level sensitivities are aggregated by averaging these sensitivities. This approach is surrounded by some methodological problems concerning, respectively, the structural model used to reflect the relation between the systematically varied products and the preference scores and the aggregation of the individual-level conjoint analysis results. Each problem is discussed successively.