Abstract

Purpose: This study focuses on the Chinese smartphone market to estimate product attributes influencing Chinese customers’ preference for developing new smartphones through conjoint analysis. Research design, data and methodology: The online questionnaire survey is processed among Chinese potential smartphone customers. Conjoint analysis including traditional conjoint analysis (TCA) and choice-based conjoint analysis (CBCA), is used to analyze the useful data of 500. Results: Results indicate that price is the most important predictor while screen size is the least for Chinese customers’ preference whether the method is TCA or CBCA. However, the importance of brand, capacity, CPU, and screen design is different. Moreover, based on each smartphone attribute level’s utility, the new products with the best combinations are different compared with both methods. Finally, the predicted market shares of the top 3 products are the same with maximum utility rule model between TCA and CBCA. However, when considering with the new best combined product, they are significantly different. Conclusions: Managers should recognize the differences between TCA and CBCA and select the best method to develop new smartphones for sustainable business in the Chinese competitive market based on the important attributes of price, brand, capacity, CPU, screen design, and size.