In this example, you build and analyze a choice design to optimize a product based on consumer preferences. In this example, a computer manufacturer is interested in manufacturing a new laptop and wants information about customer preferences before beginning an expensive development process. The manufacturer decides to construct a design consisting of two sets of profiles to administer to ten respondents. The goal of the choice design is to understand how potential laptop purchasers view the advantages of a collection of four attributes:
• size of hard drive disk (40 GB or 80 GB)
• speed of processor (1.5 GHz or 2.0 GHz)
• battery life (4 Hrs or 6 Hrs)
• cost of computer ($1000, $1200 or $1500)
To construct the design for the ten respondents, you first conduct a small pilot study using only one respondent. Then you analyze the results and use the parameter estimates as prior information in designing the final study for the ten respondents.