Feature Spotlight: Conjoint Analysis

In this Feature Spotlight we're talking about conjoint analysis. Many people tend to shy away from conjoint because it seems very complicated, when in reality, it is not that difficult and quite useful for businesses. For those that are completely new to conjoint, check out our Beginner's Guide to Conjoint Analysis first. There's a great infographic that explains the main types of conjoint and their applications, as well as a real-world example. Once you feel comfortable with the overview, keep reading to learn more about how to set up conjoint in this feature spotlight.

In the simplest terms, conjoint is a trade-off analysis. Every single day, consumers are faced with a trade-off. Imagine that you are grocery shopping. You compare products, ingredients, sizes, flavors, brands, prices and so much more. You are weighing the different attributes in your mind to achieve the best value for your money. This is essentially what conjoint analysis is. With the Survey Analytics platform, you can conduct choice based conjoint to get feedback on a new product before it is received in the marketplace.

Choice based conjoint is predominantly used to help evaluate new products, or variations of existing products, before entering the ever-changing marketplace. Conjoint allows researchers to simulate the decisions that consumers would make before the heavy costs of product development. It is a very inexpensive method to gathering feedback on new products.

To set up conjoint in a survey, first log into your Survey Analytics account. Click on "Create a new survey" or "Add question to this survey." Scroll down a bit, then click on "Conjoint (Discrete Choice)".

This is the next screen you will see. First enter the header/ instructions that you want your survey respondents to read. In the features box, enter each feature on a new line. Examples of features are price, size, flavor, color etc. Once you have entered your features they will autopopulate in the box below. In these boxes, enter the desired levels. Again, enter one per line. Click on save question.

This is how the choice based conjoint will look in your survey. As you can see, respondents must choose between the features you entered, in this case price and flavor. This will force them to choose which attributes are most important to them.

Finally, once your survey has the desired number of responses, you can view reports. Click on "Analytics" across the top bar. Scroll down towards the bottom and click "Conjoint Analysis" on the left side, then "Reports" on the right side. From there you can view the best and worst profiles, relative importance and even more data.
For more in-depth information on Conjoint and MaxDiff, check out our past webinar replay and slides here. To read the Q&A session from that webinar, go here. Check out the infographic below on the basics of conjoint.