Dealing with Product Similarity in Conjoint Simulations

One of the reasons conjoint analysis has been so popular as a management decision tool has been the availability of a choice simulator. These simulators often arrive in the form of a software or spreadsheet program accompanying the output of a conjoint study. These simulators enable managers to perform ‘what if’ questions about their market—estimating market shares under various assumptions about competition and their own offerings. As examples, simulators can predict the market share of a new offering; they can estimate the direct and cross elasticity of price changes within a market, or they can form the logical guide to strategic simulations that anticipate short- and long-term competiti…