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Judgments and decision are central to entrepreneurship, but capturing them empirically is challenging. Shepherd and Zacharakis (1997) addressed this challenge by identifying metric conjoint analysis as an experimental method capable of capturing the decision policies of actors engaged in entrepreneurial task, creating a “window of opportunity” for entrepreneurship research. On the twentieth anniversary of this chapter, the authors reflect on the impact the ideas had on their own work and careers, while, at the same time, address the possibility that the “typical” conjoint study may have reached the end. From this platform, the authors identify unknown attributes, interactive effects, rich media, mixed methods, and sophisticated data analysis as potential pathways by which conjoint analysis can continue to advance understanding of entrepreneurship. Their conclusion is that when coupled with impactful research questions, innovative uses of conjoint analysis have an important role to play in the future of entrepreneurship research. Hence, the authors believe that Dean A. Shepherd’s and Zach Zacharakis’s bold effort will continue as a quintessential resource for those researchers who wish to tap the mind of entrepreneurs, investors, and other key actors as they traverse the journey of business venturing.

Behavioral scientists have long sought to capture how individuals’ understandings, perceptions and beliefs affect their decisions, often through examining the underlying cognitive processes that drive action (Schendel & Hofer, 1979). Economists, for example, are interested in how individuals’ utility functions influence their actions. Marketing researchers investigate how consumers’ preferences are reflected in their purchase behaviors. Organization researchers examine individual characteristics that influence outcomes such as job satisfaction, promotion, and turnover (Aiman-Smith et al., 2002).

Since the inception of the conjoint analysis technique in the year 1971, papers addressing the epistemological aspects of conjoint analysis are scant. Hence, this paper attempts to address the vacuum of qualitative discourse addressing the epistemological and methodological aspects of conjoint analysis including different issues, challenges, probable solutions, limitations and future direction of conjoint analysis in the recent decade.

For exploring the methodological and epistemological aspects of conjoint analysis, the seminal papers on conjoint analysis were reviewed. Moreover, the authors' experience for the state-of-art review was also taken into consideration.

The findings suggest that conjoint analysis that roots back since 1971 has not seen much exploration in Asian regions and is mainly used for new product development in the field of marketing or allied areas. Moreover, the reliability and validity of conjoint analysis is always a matter of concern for the researchers that hinders this technique's wider adaptability. Thus, the paper presents some probable solutions to address the focal issues useful for improved reliability and validity of the conjoint analysis technique.

This paper attempts to familiarize the researchers with epistemological and methodological aspects of conjoint analysis with certain solutions to evolve beyond existing conjoint analysis dimensions in terms of improved validity, reliability, epistemological and methodological aspects of conjoint analysis (CA). Moreover, it acts as a call for research in different research domains, especially in the Asian continent.

There exist certain seminal research papers on epistemological aspects of conjoint analysis. However, there is a dearth of such attempt in the recent decade addressing the application issues of conjoint analysis incorporating the recent issues as well. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to usher the future researcher to understand the methodological aspects of conjoint analysis. It may prevent them from violating the basic assumptions and methodological threshold. This research technique is preferred equally by academicians and practitioners, thus making it imperative to have clarity beforehand for improved research rigor.

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.

Dolphin excursions have become increasingly popular worldwide. Many past studies assessing the value of dolphin excursions use choice-based methods such as the conjoint analysis. However, this method is often criticized as being hypothetical. The purpose of this paper is to describe a relatively low cost but effective approach to enhance understanding of consumer preference obtained by conjoint analysis. The method relies heavily on using internet-based survey tools.

Enabled by an online tool, individuals are asked to self-explicate their preferred alternatives using the same attributes as are found in the conjoint design. The difference between the self-constructed, preferred alternatives and those offered in conjoint experiment are incorporated into choice models. Unlike previous research where only rough estimates can be provided, the proposed method allows precise capture of respondents’ preferred alternative through the automated online survey design.

Results show that although the extra effort involved in data collection is small, the gain in model fit, choice interpretation, and the value (welfare) estimation is sizeable. Evidence indicates that consumers would be willing to pay up to $50 more for adventurous excursions and guarantees that they will interact with dolphins could worth up to $70 per trip. The approach presented in this paper can also serve as a method to test for preference consistency.

This study is the first using an online survey to assess values associated with dolphin excursion. It describes the benefit of involving online tools to enhance modeling and interpretation of consumer behavior. Applications of internet-based surveys on household consumer products are abundant (such as food and electronics) but this study offers a much less discussed application in environmental service.

This chapter is a reflection on the Shepherd and Zacharakis (1997) paper, which starts with a review of citations in the intervening 20 years, and dives more deeply into these works to better describe and consider the evolution and use of conjoint analysis in entrepreneurship research. The proliferation of new uses for a conjoint analysis are identified, such as more studies of entrepreneurial decision making, which came to supplant the early efforts, which focused on venture capital decisions. Additional expansions into other entrepreneurship stakeholder groups are also reviewed. The use of conjoint as an accelerator of multilevel research is also noted, as are the improvements and challenges in conjoint methodologies as the field has matured.

To solve the trade‐offs between marketing and R&D domains and to minimize information loss in new product development (NPD), this study proposes an integrated design process as a new solution to the interface system between the two domains.

House of Quality integrated with multivariate statistical analysis is used for determining important design features. These design features are used as parameters for conjoint analysis and Taguchi method, and then the results of analyses are compared. Sequential application of conjoint analysis and Taguchi method, depending on the differences in utilities and signal to noise ratios, is applied for the integrated design process. An automotive interior design is illustrated for the validation of the integrated design process.

The integrated design process determines a point of compromise between the optimums of conjoint analysis and Taguchi method. Sequential application of two methods ensures full utilization of both methods and no loss of information.

More illustrations on NPD are needed to verify the proposed process.

The design process suggested in this study can be used for process innovation in six sigma approach and be integrated with value chain intelligently. This study proposes the strategic guideline of the integrated design process for enterprises.

The integrated design process suggests the solution for the trade‐offs between marketing domain that pursues the utility of product and R&D domain that emphasizes robustness of product quality. This integrated design process will give enterprises competitive advantages in NPD.

The purpose of this paper is to presents an interactive conjoint analysis Web-based system that allows the problems of traditional conjoint analysis to be avoided.In the case of a product with lot of parameters, respondents’ tacit preferences may be difficult to understand for marketing analysis. To get a precise analysis, respondents must be allowed to reconsider and correct by themselves their evaluations with an adapted tool.

This system also helps respondents to easily evaluate complex product profiles and to be involved in the evaluation process, which also leads to the creation of new knowledge for product design. As this system is designed for marketers and for respondents, this paper also presents the case of a product evaluation with attributes selectable by respondents.

This paper is based on empirical experiment to obtain an efficient design of our system. The authors propose different evaluation scenario to usersto decide the design of our system. The authors want to include users in our evaluation process; however, we found that too much liberty for users can interfere with our objective.

This paper present the design of our original system allowing to perform interactive conjoint analysis.