Understanding Conjoint Analysis

摘要

Understanding what the consumer wants is a fundamental job of most food scientists working in product development today, and surveys are common ways to determine consumer wants and needs. However, one of the problems in survey research is bias in attitude measurement. In the past several years, a new approach has become available to food scientists to deal with survey topics more deeply and with less bias than focus groups on the one hand and direct question-and-answer surveys on the other. Rather than directly asking subjects a question about certain attributes and their value to the subjects, conjoint analysis follows a less-direct, more-natural approach to a topic, allowing the topic to be embedded within the context of an issue, i.e., a concept, rather than as a single aspect of a question, such as "Are you concerned about fat in your diet?" The respondent might not know how to answer the question and might give all sorts of answers, objections, and politically correct statements that befuddle the issue. Conjoint analysis can avoid this problem.