Abstract
Segmenting markets with conjoint analysis. An application to tourism. Conjoint analysis has become one of the favorite tools for segmenting markets. The focus of conjoint analysis is squarely on the measurement of buyer preferences for product (or service) attribute levels and the buyer benefits that consumers derive from the attributes of a product or service, and these benefits have proved to be one of the most powerful segmentation bases. But the large numbers of conjoint segmentation procedures that are available may confuse researchers who seek to identify segments in a market on the basis of a conjoint stud y. The authors compare four different conjoint segmentation methods: a priori with back ground variables, post hoc with background variables, post hoc with utilities and post hoc with pre ferences. Although no single method can be designated as universally preferable, overall, the methods directly based on the preferences of the respondents seem to perform the best.
