Mobile Customer Integration:  A Smartphone Application Prototype for Conducting Mobile Conjoint Studies

Rapid technological advancements and widespread adoption of smartphones in recent years provide companies with new opportunities for integrating customers in innovation processes. In this paper we present a prototype of a smartphone application that can be used by marketing researchers to conduct mobile conjoint studies. Compared to traditional approaches, our prototype allows conjoint studies to be carried out in a shorter timeframe with a large number of distributed respondents. After a brief introduction to customer integration and smartphones, we describe the conjoint analysis method and its most common form: the full-profile approach. We then propose a system architecture that enables conjoint studies to be carried out in a mobile setting using a smartphone application. Based on the conjoint analysis method and the proposed system architecture, we derive a set of requirements for our smartphone application prototype, describe its architecture and provide a short tour of the user interface. We conclude the article with a discussion of the potentials and limitations of the prototype and highlight further research efforts in the field of mobile customer integration.