A Conjunctive-Compensatory Approach to the Self-Explication of Multiattributed Preferences

Protocol analyses of consumers’ choices among multiattributed products reveal that a two-stage model may be closer to the true process than the single-stage compensatory model implicit in traditional conjoint analysis. A conjunctive stage in which the consumer eliminates options with one or more unacceptable attribute levels is followed by a compensatory stage in which the remaining product options are traded-off on the multiple attributes. A self-explicated preference measurement procedure based on the two-stage model is proposed. Compared to previous self-explicated approaches, a conceptually more appropriate definition of attribute importance is used. Data on MBAs’ preference structures for job alternatives were collected and used to predict job choices made a few months later. The simpler approach proposed here yielded a slightly larger predictive validity compared to that obtained in a previous study using trade-off analyis on the same problem.