On the use of Weighted Regression in Conjoint Analysis

Conjoint analysis seeks to explain an ordered categorical ordinal variable according to several variables using a multiple regression scheme. A common problem encountered, there, is the presence of missing values in classification-ranks. In this paper, we are interested in the cases where consumers provide a ranking of some products instead of rating these products (i.e. explained variable presents missing values).In order to deal with this problem, we propose a weighted regression scheme. We empirically show (in several cases of weighting) that, if the number of missing values is not too large, the data remain useful, and our results are close to those of the complete order. A simulation study confirms these findings.