Lead User Identification in Conjoint Analysis Based Product Design

Nowadays, the lead user method [von Hippel, Manag Sci 32(7):791– 805, 1986; Lüthje et al. (Res Pol 34(6):951–965, 2005)] and conjoint analysis [Green and Rao (J Market Res 8(3):355–363, 1971), Baier and Brusch (Conjointanalyse: Methoden Anwendungen Praxisbeispiele, Springer, Heidelberg, 2009)] are widely used methods for (new) product design. Both methods collect and analyze customers’ preferences and use them for (optimal) product design. However, whereas the lead user method primarily creates breakthrough innovations [see von Hippel et al. (Harv Bus Rev 77(5):47–57, 1999)], conjoint analysis is more capable for incremental innovations [Helm et al. (Int J Manag Decis Making 9(3):242–26, 2008), Baier and Brusch (Conjointanalyse: Methoden Anwendungen Praxisbeispiele, Springer, Heidelberg, 2009)]. In this paper we extend conjoint analysis by lead user identification for the design of breakthrough innovations. The new procedure is compared to standard conjoint analysis in an empirical setting.