Tuesday 6 September 2011

Factor Analysis and Conjoint Analysis

Factor analysis is a collection of methods used to examine how underlying constructs influence the responses on a number of measured variables. There are two types of factor analysis: exploratory and confirmatory. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) attempts to discover the nature of the constructs influencing a set of responses while Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tests whether a specified set of constructs is influencing responses in a predicted way.

Both types of factor analyses are based on the Common Factor Model. This model proposes that each observed response is influenced partially by underlying common factors and partially by underlying unique factors. The strength of the link between each factor and each measure varies, such that a given factor influences some measures more than others.

Conjoint analysis is a statistical technique used in market research to determine how people value different features that make up an individual product or service.

The objective of conjoint analysis is to determine what combination of a limited number of attributes is most influential on respondent choice or decision making. A controlled set of potential products or services is shown to respondents and by analyzing how they make preferences between these products, the implicit valuation of the individual elements making up the product or service can be determined. These implicit valuations can be used to create market models that estimate market share, revenue and even profitability of new designs.

In a conjoint analysis, the respondent may be asked to arrange a list of combinations of product attributes in decreasing order of preference. Once this ranking is obtained, a computer is used to find the utilities of different values of each attribute that would result in the respondent's order of preference. This method is efficient in the sense that the survey does not need to be conducted using every possible combination of attributes. The utilities can be determined using a subset of possible attribute combinations. From these results one can predict the desirability of the combinations that were not tested.


Author: Karthikeyan Dakshinamurthy (13081)

Group: Marketing - Group 4

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