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The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to describe a novel tool (conjoint analysis (CA)) for application by explaining the theory behind it; second, how the tool was developed; and third, how it can be used to ensure an optimal festival/event offering. In this way, the research needed on the individual behavioural and psychological factors of the events-tourism sector are addressed.

Planned events in this case the three largest arts festivals in South Africa (SA) (in Potchefstroom – Festival A, Grahamstown – Festival B and Oudtshoorn – Festival C) were studied. Five different attributes – festival brands, ticket prices, entertainment activities, food and beverages and transport to venues – were developed to describe arts festivals. The data were analysed using CA. CA was used in a linear regression model with individual ratings for each arts festival product. In addition, two techniques often used as complementary to and in conjunction with CA, namely, cluster and correspondence analysis were also used. K-means clustering constructed a four-factor solution, which categorised and labelled the attributes as, brand-, price-, activity- and transport-sensitive. The software package STATISTICA used the results for the correspondence analysis to draw maps between the arts festivals and attribute importance, age groups and festival attributes, arts festivals and language.

Festival A and B preferred the attribute level quality music, whilst Festival C preferred quality performances on the attribute entertainment. On the attribute refreshments, Festivals B and C preferred value for money and Festival A, a wide variety of good quality refreshments. On the attributes transport and ticket prices, all three festivals agreed for safe and secure parking and at the same price.

This paper demonstrates, by applying the recommended tool, how it can be used to distinguish festivals/events in an overcrowded SA market with the possibility of providing a competitive advantage. In that all three festivals researched preferred the attribute festival brand held in the region which destination marketing organisations (DMOs) can use to their advantage.

This paper demonstrates, by applying the recommended tool, how it can be used to distinguish festivals/events in an overcrowded SA market with the possibility of providing a competitive advantage. In that all three festivals researched preferred the attribute festival brand held in the region which DMOs can use to their advantage.

The description of the development of the model could illustrate how market positioning (by way of revitalizing older theories), in the arts festival context can be approached to ensure an optimal arts festival offering. By so doing the paper strives to make an academic contribution.

The purpose of this paper is to utilise market-oriented methodologies and simulation analysis to generate information regarding consumers’ attitudes, opinions and preferences towards novel β-glucan-enriched breads.

Focus Groups and In-depth interviews were used to generate consumer information on potentially suitable attributes that would maximise consumer acceptance. The approach involved the creation of a set of realistic product concepts from a combination of attribute levels and the presentation of these product concepts to consumers. A fractional factorial design generated an orthogonal array of 22 hypothetical products that were presented to consumers for rating while K-means cluster analysis was used to segment consumers into four specific consumer segments. The simulation analysis then identified β-glucan-enriched bread concepts targeted specifically at these four market segments.

The simulation analysis identified β-glucan-enriched bread concepts targeted specifically at these four market segments.

This research can assist manufacturers who wish to optimally design foods with novel ingredients and aid in the development of product concepts which maximise consumer acceptance and increase the likelihood of product success.

The purpose of this study is to utilise market-oriented methodologies to determine key attributes driving consumers' preferences for novel sustainably sourced seafood concepts, derived from a species of wild-caught fish unfamiliar to consumers and to explore new product concepts for various consumer clusters.

This study applied a mixed-method approach including five focus groups with 40 consumers and a single conjoint-based questionnaire administered to 300 seafood consumers in Ireland. The focus groups explored in-depth consumers' expectations, requirements and preferences and identified the key attributes that would influence acceptance of new seafood products. Full-profile conjoint analysis was used to model consumers' preferences for novel seafood product concepts that utilised a sustainably sourced species unfamiliar to the consumer.

Focus groups revealed that the most important attributes were brand, price, format, packaging, supplementary information and accompaniment. The conjoint simulation identified three consumer clusters. Product concepts containing a sustainably sourced fish species were identified according to the preferences of each consumer cluster.

This research highlighted a sustainability angle in new product development and identified a competitive advantage and market potential for boarfish (Capros aper), which is an underutilised Irish fish species. It used a market-oriented approach to explore the development of novel sustainably sourced value-added seafood product concepts. The study results provide small and medium seafood companies with original and unique insights for developing novel sustainably sourced fish products that increase consumer acceptance.

Much of the research conducted in logistics/SCM has focused on satisfaction/retention of customers. This has left a critical gap for managers: before customers can be satisfied and ultimately retained, a purchase choice of logistics services has to occur. To date, very little research has addressed how logistics customers make purchase choice decisions about logistics services. The purpose of this paper, using logistics research methods, is to introduce adaptive choice modelling (ACM) to address this gap and put forth a research method that is useful for academic researchers and logistics/SCM managers.

This paper provides an overview of ACM, along with a discussion of its important research advantages, limitations, and practical applications. Additionally, an empirical demonstration of this research technique is provided to illustrate how academic researchers and logistics managers can use ACM to better understand the decision‐making process of customers when selecting logistics services.

In order to demonstrate this research technique, a research project was designed and implemented that analyzed the choice process of consumers selecting parcel carriers to ship a textbook. The results show that price, speed of delivery, and tracking are the three most important variables in the selection decision. The results also show that consumers are not homogeneous, but can be divided into five distinct need‐based segments. Recognizing and understanding the nature of these segments should help managers better meet the needs of parcel shippers.

The main research limitation with this study is that it is based on a convenience sample; thus future research will need to replicate this study to confirm the research findings. However, the ultimate purpose of the study is to present a new research method and discuss how to apply this method, so that logistics/SCM practitioners and academic researchers can better understand customers of logistics/SCM services. Thus, while the nature of the sample is a limitation, it should be viewed in this context.

While conjoint analysis has existed for decades, this technique has rarely been implemented by logistics/SCM researchers and practitioners. Instead, logistics/SCM researchers and practitioners have focused more on retention methods and have virtually ignored modelling the actual purchase choice of logistics/SCM services. New advancements in conjoint analysis, specifically the ACM approach, have many important and unique advantages and applications for logistics/SCM researchers and practitioners. ACM has not been used in a logistics/SCM context.

This paper aims to uncover patterns of Mexican craft beer consumers and guide companies’ decisions in the creation of new products, marketing strategies, advertising and promotion to increase craft beer sales and contribute to faster growth.

This is a conjoint analysis with a selection of attributes for new or renewed products, marginal disposition to pay for particular characteristics through brand-specific choice-based design, and market simulation.

This paper clearly demonstrates consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay in Mexico, with a cutting-edge market research technique combining the prioritization of preferred craft beer characteristics, and the price consumers are willing to pay for such product characteristics.

The study's sample size of 501 responses is relatively small compared to the total number of craft beer consumers in Mexico. To enhance the validity and reliability of the findings, future studies should aim to obtain larger samples and compare their results with those of this study.

This study has important implications for craft beer producers, allowing them to develop targeted craft beers with appealing attributes for Mexican consumers, such as color, aroma intensity, alcohol degree intensity, bitterness, foam level and price.

This study's market forecasting simulation technique is based on assumptions of consumer behavior and market dynamics. Although relevant variables were considered, unanticipated external factors or market changes could impact the forecasts' accuracy. This will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of craft beer consumer preferences in different markets and enhance the reliability of forecasting techniques.

This paper informs craft beer producers by providing valuable knowledge on customers’ preferences and willingness to pay to enhance craft beer companies’ product development processes.

Development studies rarely measure the impact of value chain strategies on performance. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the perceived contribution of strategies to the performance of three honey value chains in Brazil.

The value chain structure-conduct-performance (SCP) framework was used to select strategies and two performance indicators, honey production growth and local value-added. In a conjoint study, experts were asked to judge the contribution to the two performance indicators of several hypothetical combinations of value chain strategies.

According to the experts, adoption of specialised technical assistance, sharing resources at the production step, increase in exports, and organic certification were the strategies which contributed the most to performance. Simulations suggested that some honey value chains could have greatly increased their performance with these higher pay-off strategies.

Quantifying the perceived impact of individual strategies contributes to improved evaluation of development interventions.

Outcomes also show that conjoint analysis is a useful method for policy evaluations in data scarce situations.

The paper combines an extended SCP framework for strategy selection and conjoint analysis for strategy evaluation of value chains.

This research aims to generate consumer knowledge to facilitate the development of new product concepts with optimal product design attributes for new fermented functional cereal beverages (FFCBs) with high market potential.

This research employed a sequential mixed research approach which integrated both qualitative and quantitative methods. A total of 12 in‐depth interviews and three focus groups were carried out to identify product concepts for new FFCBs. A conjoint model (n=299) was then developed to evaluate product‐specific factors that influenced consumer acceptance of FFCBs.

Potential target consumers of FFCBs were more likely to be young females who had relatively high educational and income levels. “Flavour” and “health/nutritional claim” were found to be the most important product attributes for consumers. The simulation analysis predicted two FFCB concepts for target consumers.

As there is a limited range of FFCBs on the market, the concept of FFCBs may be novel to consumers. Further research would be beneficial that closely integrates the strategic marketing of FFCBs with sensory analysis conducted on a range of these beverages.

During the early stages of the new product development (NPD) process, a market‐oriented research methodology can help optimise product concepts in terms of product attributes that drive consumer acceptance.

This paper provides an important insight into the significance of market‐oriented knowledge generation techniques for the development of new cereal‐based functional foods. It provides market‐oriented information on FFCBs which can be valuable for food manufacturers to maximise NPD performance and to gain competitive advantage in the functional beverages market.

In recent times, many universities have been pressured to become heavily involved in university branding. The purpose of this paper is to investigate students’ perceptions of different international universities (brands) in terms of important university attributes, including the country in which the university’s main campus is located and educational programs are designed (COD) and the method by which the educational services are distributed internationally (DM).

Using a conjoint simulation procedure, this paper predicts the impact that university attributes have on Malaysian and Chinese students’ preferences for international universities.

The results suggest that, although COD and DM are important factors, the extent to which these factors dominate student preference differs significantly across students according to nationality.

The simulation suggests how international universities can improve their branding strategies, and highlights the need to understand students’ preferences when developing marketing strategies.

Past research has compared the importance of university attributes across countries from the perspective of students, but failed to assess this issue in the light of existing university brands (at an institutional or country level). Such knowledge can provide an indication of student preferences and competitive performance, which are of great interest to education marketers. The present study predicts the impact of various university attributes on Malaysian and Chinese students’ preferences for specific international universities (brands) in four different countries, and changes in preference that occur when the style of delivery or course suitability is altered.

The ideal farmhouse cheese profile for 256 Irish farmhouse cheese consumers was one with a strong flavour, a hard texture, a wax packaged wheel, made with pasteurised milk, nutritional information present on the package, a white coloured cheese and a price of €3.17 per 200g. Least squares regression was used to estimate part worths for the conjoint analysis. A cluster analysis revealed there were two clusters with different ideal product profiles. Cluster one preferred cheese made with pasteurised milk, while cluster two preferred one made with unpasteurised milk. Market simulation experiments simulated market shares for nine products (six semi‐hard farmhouse cheeses, one soft farmhouse cheese and two factory cheeses), as well as the ideal product profiles for each cluster (two in total). The “ideal” product profile for each cluster was identified as having the largest market share, under both models of analysis.

The ongoing challenge for hospitality firms is not to avoid service failures completely but rather to find effective ways of recovering from them. The purpose of this paper is to adopt conjoint analysis to examine guest preferences for service recovery actions that are taken simultaneously and the effect of such actions in the context of hotels in order to seek answers to the following research questions: what type of compensation bundle is most preferred by guests? and How effective are compensations in terms of recovery satisfaction, especially with regard to subsequent behavioral intentions?

In order to study guest preferences for compensation, choice-based conjoint (CBC) experiments were used. The CBC survey method involves presenting respondents with several hypothetical scenarios that include numerous combinations of compensation attributes. The survey sample was recruited through web-based panels run by a marketing firm. The online survey was designed and built in the Sawtooth Software platform. Conjoint analysis was carried out.

The conjoint analysis results show that among the different compensation attributes, consumers preferred discounts the most, followed by corrective actions and loyalty points. Among the discount levels, consumers favored “free one night certificate for a future stay” over “100 percent off one night’s room bill.” Regarding loyalty points, consumers desire more points than fewer points. In terms of correction levels, consumers appear to desire an “upgrade to a suite” over just moving to another room or having the original room cleaned. Moreover, consumers prefer that service recovery be handled by upper-level management.

Several limitations should be discussed. For example, the type of service failure studied was limited to a booked room not being clean upon check-in. Different types and magnitudes of service failures may result in a different set of preferences for compensation bundles. In addition, the compensation attributes and levels were limited in scope even though they were obtained from interviews with managers at midsize hotels. Other attributes and attribute levels can be included in future studies.

Although an abundant number of studies have been done regarding service failure and recovery, the extent to which service recovery needs to be carried out before it translates into actual recovery remains unanswered. Using conjoint analysis, the study identified exactly which bundle of compensation items was most preferred by guests.