Title: Measuring customer preferences in the winter sports market: The case of Greece
Abstract: In a growing competitive international environment, the prediction of consumer preferences for multi-attribute products and services is a critical aspect for any marketing administration. Delivering a better combination of intrinsic attributes in a product and related services will help a company or organisation to create sustainable competitive advantage. Determining customer perception of value in the form of utilities can provide the marketing administration of a company with a functional tool to evaluate the usefulness of a product or a service characteristic. This paper identifies perceived values through a field study in tourism enterprises located in Greece. Questionnaires were conducted in 11 ski resorts, which varied in size, location, age and ownership structure. Conjoint analysis was applied to estimate the highest total value across the main service and product attributes offered by the resorts. Using logit models, the analysis was extended to identify the importance of consumer characteristics to the levels of seven product attributes.