Charles and Christy’s Weblog

Perhaps the coolest thing I’ve learned so far in business school is conjoint analysis for market research.

It is a technique that allows you to simultaneously segment your customers based on preference groups while measuring the comparative value of attributes to the customer.

Most market surveys convey little if any real, useful data to the product design. Conjoint analysis (and more generally, choice analysis) enables you to determine whether a feature makes any difference to customer choices and how much the customer is willing to pay for such a feature.

Some web software has been developed to conduct such surveys. Currently, I’m trying out the software at QuestionPro.

The current round of Democratic primaries demonstrate just how much our democracy benefits from thick competition.

Witness the evidence:

• the media pay attention to the primaries for a long time
• the party’s message gets press for a long time
• record numbers of voters turn out in the primary
• the party gets energized
• the candidates must get better at connecting with voters or bow out
• TV commercials don’t mean as much
• negative ads don’t play well

So Terry McAuliffe doesn’t get it at all. He, as DNC chair, wants the campaign to narrow down to one candidate as soon as possible.

The 2-candidate or 2-party system simply does not do politics a service, nor does it do the public a service.