Representing Heterogeneity in Consumer Response Models 1996 Choice Conference Participants

Abstract

We define sources of heterogeneity in consumer utility functions relatedto individual differences in response tendencies, drivers of utility, formof the consumer utility function, perceptions of attributes, statedependencies, and stochasticity. A variety of alternative modelingapproaches are reviewed that accommodate subsets of these various sourcesincluding clusterwise regression, latent structure models, compounddistributions, random coefficients models, etc. We conclude by defining anumber of promising research areas in this field.