Type C Simulator

Technical Features

  • Landing page: this page allows you to provide the name of the project along with key information, such as project number, fieldwork information, and your team contact details. You can include your client’s logo as well as images of key product concepts or other key material that might have been shown to respondents during the interview.
  • Sample weighting: this is usually required if the sample is not representative of the Universe due, for example, to a boosted or to a quota sample. Weighting improves representativeness. Weights computation can be done with your favourite statistical of tabulation software or you can use the powerful and flexible RIM weighting functions provided within the package R-sw-Discriminant. Once computed, respondents weights can simply be copied and pasted onto the worksheet Weights of the simulator.
  • Simulation Model: type C simulator comes with two pre-defined models: First Choice model and Share of Preference (logit) model. Share of Preference model is quite flexible and the sensitivity can be specified by adjusting a scaling coefficient. These are the most popular simulation algorithms, but other models could be implemented by the user or by Rsw-software upon request.
  • Awareness and Distribution calibration: it is possible to specify separate awareness and distribution coefficients in order to calibrate the shares and adjust a market scenario to more realistic market conditions. For instance, if a product is available in 75% of stores, you can enter 0.75 (distribution coefficient).

Step-by-Step guide to amend a Type C Simulator

  1. Review the landing page (worksheet mainOutput) and add the team contact details for the project and your/your client logo;
  2. load the individual conjoint utilities (estimated by R-sw Conjoint) into the simulator (worksheet UTL.0);
  3. add, if required, the individual weights (worksheet Weights);
  4. add the individual segment information (e.g., region, respondent type, etc.) so that the relevant respondents can be selected via the drop down menu (worksheet Filters1);
  5. run the ready-to-use simulator macros to obtain importance scores (macro ImportanceScoresCreate) and zero-centered utilities (macro UtilitiesScoresCreate);
  6. review the help pages by replacing the screenshots and by adapting the explanatory notes;
  7. change the simulator graphics (buttons’ colors and dimensions, background color, font type and size, etc.) by entering new parameters at the worksheet ‘index’.