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Kees van der Wagt

Kees van der Wagt
Research Director
Based in the Rotterdam office
+31 10 282 3535

Adaptive CBC papers

Below is an index of available Adaptive CBC papers. Introductory articles are listed first.

A New Approach to Adaptive CBC (2007)
In this paper, Rich Johnson and Bryan Orme from Sawtooth Software take an entirely new approach from their previous attempts at adaptive CBC. The new approach mimics the purchase process of formulating a consideration set using non-compensatory heuristics (such as "must have" or "must avoid" features), followed by a more careful tradeoff of alternatives within the consideration set using compensatory rules.

Adaptive CBC involves three core stages: 1) Build-Your-Own (BYO) Stage, 2) Screening Stage, and 3) Choice Tasks Stage. Rich and Bryan conducted a split-sample experiment comparing the new approach to traditional CBC. They found that respondents liked the adaptive survey more and felt it was more realistic--even though it took about double the time as traditional CBC. Furthermore, part-worths developed from ACBC were more predictive of holdout tasks than traditional CBC, despite the methods bias in favor of CBC for predicting the CBC-looking holdouts.

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A Perspective on Adaptive CBC (What Can We Expect from Respondents?) (2008)

Rich Johnson, a key person in the development of conjoint analysis methods over the last 30 years, gives his perspective on Adaptive CBC (ACBC). What role does it play in the evolution of conjoint methods? What about the respondent burden? What about respondent engagement? What strengths does ACBC have over other approaches? This short essay contains pearls of wisdom.

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ACBC Technical Paper (Adaptive Choice) (2009)

"Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint" (ACBC) is a new approach for adaptive choice-based conjoint studies. The interview has three main phases: 1) BYO (configuration) phase, 2) Consideration phase, 3) Choice phase. This follows the common proposition that buyers develop consideration sets and then choose a final product from within the consideration set. The interview adapts to each respondent, giving a more relevant, interactive experience. ACBC is recommended for experienced conjoint analysts and for projects involving about 5 or more attributes. Traditional brand-package-price studies should continue to be conducted under the standard (non-adaptive) CBC software.

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Testing Adaptive CBC: Shorter Questionnaires and BYO vs. “Most Likelies” (2008)
Bryan Orme and Rich Johnson report on another methodological test of their Adaptive CBC procedure (comparing it to standard non-adaptive CBC). This time, they study home purchases and employ shorter questionnaires, to see if similar results can be achieved with substantially less information. They use a slightly improved design algorithm as compared to their previous test reported in their 2007 article, "A New Approach to Adaptive CBC". Also, they test the use of a "most likelies" question rather than the standard BYO question.

Adaptive CBC again is shown to have greater internal predictive validity than standard CBC. Reducing the length of the questionnaires doesn't seem to reduce the predictive ability of Adaptive CBC for this test, though the authors caution that some information must have been lost. The "most likelies" option is shown to be a viable approach, though Orme and Johnson caution that the utilities are mis-informed by at least a small degree when using this approach.

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Fine-Tuning CBC and Adaptive CBC Questionnaires (2009)
In this article, the author (Orme) uses random split-sample experiments to test different ways of asking CBC and Adaptive CBC (ACBC) questionnaires. Specifically, he examines:
  • Use of minimal overlap vs. modest overlap for CBC questionnaires (modest overlap seems to improve results)
  • ACBC for small designs--just 4 attributes (ACBC is shown to work as well as CBC)
  • Placing “Unacceptable” screening questions prior to “Must-Have” screening questions in ACBC (seems to work better)
  • Individual-level (customized) utility constraints in ACBC (no benefit shown for this 4-attribute data set, though benefits should be greater for larger, more demanding designs)
  • Whether giving respondents a “consistency game” will improve their data and their experience (minimal gains in fit observed, but with the risk of annoying about 1/5 of the respondents)
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CBC vs. ACBC: Comparing Results with Real Product Selection (2009)
Validity studies that include data on actual sales are hard to obtain. In this article, Chris Chapman of Microsoft Corporation compares CBC and Adaptive CBC (ACBC) in terms of a number of measures, including ability to predict actual market shares for a consumer electronics device. ACBC produced slightly better estimates of market share. Also, Chapman cites evidence that ACBC may obtain more precise estimates than CBC, indicating need for lesser sample size (with reduction in fielding costs). Price sensitivity was also greater for ACBC than CBC.

Chapman conludes: "In short, the performance of ACBC for our CE product was similar to CBC and somewhat better in alignment with market data. We believe future research would be useful to determine whether this pattern of results (better prediction; higher price sensitivity; lower standard deviation) continues with other product categories."

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