Paper Title
Do The Characteristics of Individual Consumers Impact The Stability of The Implied Attribute Weights (Feature Preferences) of A Particular Product Over A Period of Time?

Abstract
It is natural to expect the preference for different products, and within a generic product for its variants, and in fact for preference for different features (that make up the product), of a consumer will change over time. This has been studied extensively by the marketing researchers. However, the importance the consumer attaches to individual features of the product (generally known as attribute weight or feature weight) and how these weights could be changing over the time have not been explored by many researchers. Recently a study involving 161 UK participants of all ages and backgrounds participating in three rounds of survey over nine months’period has established that attribute weights do change over a time period for different products although the magnitude of the variation depended on the type of products studied. In this paper,an alternative aspect of the problem is being reported, namely whether the individual consumers’ characteristics such as demographics, consumers’ product usage pattern, their technical expertise etc. relate to the changes in attribute weights over a time period. Key words - Consumer Characteristics, Choice based conjoint, Attribute coefficient change, longitudinal study