Can the subject of the choice task be SME's owners

[Anat Tchetchik]

Dear Ngene users,

We are conducting a research about barriers toward moving to "servicizing" model (instead of ownership) in a B-to-B context.
The potential customers in our case are self employed farmers who should get the decision to move to "servicizing"
Is there any problem in employing an experimental design were the subjects are not "regular" consumers but rather small business owners?
I guess that this is OK, yet I didn't find such examples in the literature.
Thank in advance for any reply,
Best
Anat

[Anat Tchetchik]

Hey all,
I've sent this question 3 weeks ago... I guess that having none of you replying implies that is was too trivial question and that the answer is in the affirmative...i.e. that is is ok to employ the choice task on SMEs owners..
If there are any objections.. I'll appreciate if you can share them with me
Best,
Anat

[johnr]

Hi Anat

Respondents for discrete choice models can be any agent who makes a decision, not just consumers. The agents can be businesses, governments, etc. Provided a discrete choice is the unit of analysis, the theory remains the same. Note that numerous studies on business choices have been conducted over the years. Indeed, the econometrics of discrete choice models, outside of the behavioural interpretations, is such that any discrete outcome can be modelled independent of the type of agency or agents being modelled. For example, we have applied discrete choice models to stock exchange data where the outcomes were whether a firm was observed to have gone bankrupt, merged, or continued unchanged over the period of the data. If you are looking at a behavioural model of SME, then you simply need to assume that firms act in a behaviourally similar manner to individuals - that is they are utility maximisers.

The typical constraint in getting data on business choices is identifying the key decision makers from the firms and getting them to respond. Data collection is often, in our experience, much more expensive, however if one has the resources, then there is no reason to do this.

John

[Anat Tchetchik]

Thank you so much John!
I suspected that but as its a part of a (highly funded) FP7 project I felt too much responsibility..
Thanks again and have a great week further!
Anat