Conjoint analysis is a popular survey-based methodology for discovering people’s preferences that is widely used for market research, new product design and government policy-making. In the social sciences, conjoint analysis is also known as a “discrete choice experiment” (DCE) or, more generally, as “choice modeling”.
The most common use of conjoint analysis is for discovering the relative importance to consumers of the attributes or features of a product, such as a smartphone: e.g. its operating performance, camera quality, battery life, size, price, etc. This information is used for designing or improving the product. Conjoint analysis is also increasingly used to support government policy-making, such as discovering how citizens feel about the features of a country’s pensions policy, which is used for policy fine-tuning.