ACM Working Paper about Conjoint Analysis in merger cases

ACM Working Paper: Using Conjoint Analysis in Merger Control (2016)

Conjoint analysis is often claimed to be a powerful tool to be used in merger assessments by competition authorities. By using conjoint analysis, one can overcome the artificial nature of hypothetical questions in stated preference surveys. This tool is extensively used by commercial companies to help them, amongst others, in their pricing decisions. Though the technique has several advantages, so far however, European competition authorities rarely use this technique in their merger assessments. In this working paper, three ACM-economists discuss how conjoint analysis can successfully be used to estimate customer behaviour in merger cases. The authors introduce conjoint analysis and illustrate how it has proved useful in several merger cases conducted by ACM and its predecessor NMa. The authors also share the eight lessons they have learned when applying this technique.