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Virtual Customer (VC)
Virtual Customer is a multidisciplinary approach to improving customer input to the product development process. VC has reinvented traditional marketing science methods such as conjoint analysis, perceptual mapping, Vocalyst, and logit analysis. We apply them in novel ways to web-based methods. Product developers can now identify customer preferences more quickly, simply, and easily.
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Current Efforts
User Design
Gathering better data faster by engaging customers directly in the design
process.
Securities Trading of Concepts (STOC)
Evaluating product concepts by using financial market methods in an entertaining
game setting.
Information Pump
Proprietary knowledge is safeguarded. Each participant sees only the appropriate
and necessary information.
FastPace (Fast Polyhedral Adaptive Conjoint
Estimation)
Reducing the questioning burden by using advanced polyhedral methods.
Reinforcement Learning
Processing much larger numbers of customers and product features by developing
“super-adaptive” methods.
Benefits
- Virtual Customer lets customers join with PD teams as full participants in a dynamic web-based exchange.
- Development teams learn customer preferences. Customers get the products they want.
- The result is a radically reduced lag time between customer input
and PD response, and at a fraction of current cost.
Results
User Design
Applications to automobiles, ski resorts, telemetrics, laptop computers,
and laptop computer bags.
Information Pump
Commercial applications for the Applied Marketing Science company and
Lava-Lamp brand motion lamps.
STOC (Securities Trading of Concepts)
Applications to automobiles, laptop computer bags, and bicycle pumps.
Virtual Customer Website
Demos, working papers, and downloads available at mitsloan.mit.edu/vc.
Research Faculty
John Hauser
Initiative Leader
Kirin Professor of Marketing
Sloan School of Management
Drazen Prelec
Associate Professor of Marketing
Sloan School of Management
Duncan Simester
Associate Professor of Management Science
Sloan School of Management
