The Role of Context Definition in Choice Experiments: a Methodological Proposal Based on Customized Scenarios

One of the most critical points for the validity of Discrete Choice Experiments lies in their capability to render the experiment as close to actual market conditions as possible. In particular, when dealing with products characterized by a large number of attributes, the construction of the experiment poses the issue of how to express the choice question providing sufficient information. Our study verifies the role of scenario definition in choice experiments and proposes a methodology to build customized scenarios by eliciting responses from interviewees on the main choice criteria, which makes it possible to render the conditions of the experiment more realistic. This methodology is applied to the case study of wine and is introduced by a systematic review of the Discrete Choice Experiments conducted on wine. The findings show that customized scenarios result in different preference estimates compared to the conventional approach. In particular, we found a significant decline in the importance of the price attribute, which could be attributed to a better definition of the product being evaluated. Moreover, the methodology is capable of gathering information on the decision-making process that would otherwise remain unobserved and that can be used for a better segmentation analysis.