On The Design Of Subscription Programs For A Performing Arts Series

This paper reports results obtained from a conjoint analysis, using a mail questionnaire, of the demand for subscription series to performing arts events. Many performing arts organizations offer substantial discounts to season subscribers. Our finding, however, is that the discount level may not be a very important consideration with respect to season subscription decisions, compared with such factors as seating priority and driving time to the auditorium. The results obtained in the study helped the management of one organization to reach a decision about reducing the size of the discount offered to subscribers. The study uses data collected by mail survey methods to estimate entries for a set of tradeoff matrices. Checks to assess the consistency of these data are developed and implemented. Finally, it is shown that commonly computed derived attribute importance weights need to be adjusted by the number of levels used to define hypothetical objects. That is, it is found that the greater the number of levels, the higher the derived importance weights, while holding constant the attribute variation