Portland Trail Blazers

What attributes are the most important to the fans?

According to the results of the conjoint analysis, the importance of each of the investigated
attributes are:

1. Location: 39,56 %
2. Ticket price: 37,54 %
3. Number of games: 11,77 %
4. Promotional items: 11,13 %

(Calculated by the formula explained during the course). These importance percentages have their
origin in the spread of the answers between the most accepted and the least accepted utility.

It should be noted, however that:

• ‘Location’ and ‘Ticket price’ have almost the same importance and are both much more
important than ‘Number of games’ and ‘Promotional items’, both of which are also close to
each other in importance
• In the attribute of ‘Number of games’, 6 games is really the only option that obtain a positive
score.

What should the Blazer’s multigame package include?

Number of games: the fans assign clearly the highest utility to the 6 games option (0,24) and since
this is also the preferred option of the management of the club, we will eliminate the other 2
options (3 games or 10 games).

Ticket price: Not surprisingly, the fans prefer the ticket prices to be as low as possible. However, the
only price that seems to be excluded is the 60$ option (-1,00), so the three other options are
possible.

Ticket locations: The highest score of all utilities is obtained by the good seats at 200 level, midcourt.
However, the management of the club is not willing to sell these seats for less than 60$, and that
price has received the most negative score of all utilities and the two scores basically balance each
other out (1,01148-1,00257), so this does not seem to be a viable way to go.

The next seating option (300 level, midcourt) is more viable. The management accept to sell these
for 25$, but both 25$ and 35$ would be viable options.

The trade-off shows that a price of 35$ + either ‘Priority for home play-off tickets’ or ‘Hot-dog and
soda with each ticket’ is evaluated as better than a price of 25$ and no promotional item (total
utilities of 0,29 against 0,69).

Promotional items: Two of the proposed promotional items (Trail Blazers apparel, Gift certificate for
restaurant) can be discarded as they receive very low scores and are also the most expensive. The 2
other options seem to be interesting, both are perceived by the fans as valuable, and both are
cheap.
Another way to go would be to go for the lowest price, 15$ per seat per game. The results of the
analysis show that this will be evaluated positively together with the ‘300 level, on the corners’
seating (but not with the ‘300 level, behind the baskets’).

So, the analysis suggests different options:

1. 6-games
35$ per seat
300 level, midcourt
Hot dog and soda or Priority for home-playoff tickets
2. 6-games
15$ per seat
300 level, on the corners
Priority for home-playoff tickets

Even though the fans do not evaluate the 60$ option very well, it may still be profitable and have
other beneficial effects (see below), so we will also evaluate a third option:

1. 6-games
60$ per seat
200 level, midcourt
Hot dog and soda or Priority for home-playoff tickets

How profitable will the packages be?

Option 1 will create profits: 35$ - (18 (fixed cost)+3,25 (Hot dog etc)) = 13.75 $ (or 17$ in case the
fan prefers the ‘Priority’-option).

Option 2 will also create profits, but much less: 15$ - 12 (fixed cost) = 3$

Both options will be received as positive and both are profitable. We don’t have information
concerning how the ‘300 level, on the corners’ are sold otherwise, if they are generally sold well
Option 2 may not be a good idea, but here we accept it. If there in general are problems with selling
these seats, we can consider that the low profit is acceptable since the alternative may be the loss
associated with an empty seat.

Option 3 is also profitable: 60$ -( 40 (fixed cost) + 3,25 (Hot dog etc))= 16,75$ (or 20 in case the fan
prefers the ‘Priority’-option.

Clearly, this third option will not be chosen by many, but it is likely to make more people choose
Option 1 over Option 2.

Recommendation.

I can see 3 viable options for the management to choose:

1. The easiest solution is simply to offer only option 1:

6-games
 35$ per seat
300 level, midcourt
Hot dog and soda or Priority for home-playoff tickets

This option I highly valued by the fans (utility around 0,69 – depending on the promotional
item chosen), and by offering only one option, the system will be very easy to administrate.

2. Give the fans a choice: The consumer will often value the possibility to choose between
several option and it could therefore be considered to offer both option 1 and option 2.
There are two downsides to this; it will be more difficult to administrate and option 2 in
itself is not very profitable. Maybe Option 2 is only interesting if in general it is difficult to
sell these seats, that are not very estimated. In case this is so, Option 2 may be a good way
to generate a small profit (or avoid a loss) on these seats.

3. Place a decoy: In case both Option 1 and Option 2 are chosen, it could be considered to
place a more expensive option as a decoy to drive more to choose Option 1 instead of
Option 2. This would be Option 3. This will further complicate the administration of the
system.

Which option is the best?: well it depends on the willingness to administrate a more or less
complicated system and also of the normal fate of the less popular seats in Option 2.

Without that knowledge you really can’t answer that question, my feeling is that I would
recommend offering all 3 options.