Latent Class Models for Conjoint Analysis

Conjoint analysis was introduced to market researchers in the early 1970s as a means to understand the importance of product and service attributes and price as predictors of consumer preference (e.g., Green and Rao 1971; Green and Wind 1973). Since then it has received considerable attention in academic research (see Green and Srinivasan 1978, 1990 for exhaustive reviews; and Louviere 1994 for a review of the behavioral foundations of conjoint analysis). By systematically manipulating the product or service descriptions shown to a respondent with an experimental design, conjoint analysis allows decision-makers to understand consumer preferences in an enormous range of potential market situations (see Cattin and Wittink 1982; Wittink and Cattin 1989; and Wittink, Vriens, and Burhenne 1994 for surveys of industry usage of conjoint analysis).