METHOD USING CONJOINT ANALYSIS TO SCREEN SUBJECTS TO EVALUATE SOUND QUALITY

Abstract

Because the success of audio equipment as Kansei products depends on sound quality evaluation, and the first step in obtaining persuasive evaluations is to select reliable subjects, herein a method to screen subjects is proposed. This method, which consists of four experiments, uses conjoint analysis, which is a statistical technique to determine how people evaluate different features that make up an individual product. In the first experiment, subjects who prefer sound quality over visual design, brand, or price are selected from potential customers of car audio equipment. In the next experiment, subjects are further narrowed by selecting those who provide stable judgments on a specific timbre factor. The remaining two experiments examine whether the subjects stably judge based on their preferred factor. By applying the proposed method, five subjects were selected from the original 27 subjects.