Note: with the release of the new market simulator integrated within Lighthouse Studio, there is less need to use the older SMRT system. However, the product search capabilities are not yet available within Lighthouse Studio's market simulator, so some researchers may still need to follow these steps to import their utilities into the SMRT market simulator.
If conducting conjoint analysis studies (CBC, ACBC, ACA and CVA) with Lighthouse Studio, you'll often want to move the data from Lighthouse Studio into the SMRT software package for analysis (market simulations, counting analysis, logit, etc.). Sometimes data are moved directly into SMRT, and other times data are moved from Lighthouse Studio into a preliminary analysis program such as hierarchical Bayes, and then afterward to SMRT.
CBC (Choice-Based Conjoint) Data
When you download Lighthouse Studio data from the web server, your data reside within your project folder. The steps for moving data into SMRT are:
1. Compute utilities using logit, latent class, or HB within Lighthouse Studio. When utility estimation is run, a generic utility file with an extension .hbu may be saved to a subfolder within your project (by clicking Export Utilities from the Analysis Run Manager).
2. Start the SMRT software (a different program from Lighthouse Studio, also downloadable from our website), by clicking Start | Program Files | Sawtooth Software | Sawtooth Software SMRT.
3. Within SMRT, create a new study for analyzing the results (select File | New and choose a folder and a studyname). You can choose any folder or studyname that you want, as this new study functions independently of your original Lighthouse study.
4. Import the generic utility file into SMRT, by clicking Analysis | Run Manager | Import.... Select files of type as "Generic Conjoint File (*.hbu)" and browse to the subfolder of your project directory that contains the logit, latent class, or HB run you wish to import into SMRT. Double-click the file. It is imported into SMRT and available as a utility run for conducting market simulations.
Note: If you use standalone versions of CBC/HB or Latent Class software (rather than the built-in applications within Lighthouse Studio) to estimate part-worth utilities, use the .CHO (or .CHS, in the case of constant sum responses to be analyzed with CBC/HB) and .ATT files with those systems (see the CBC/HB and Latent Class manuals for details) to produce a data file containing respondent part-worths (a .HBU file if HB analysis, or .LCU and .Pxx files if Latent Class analysis). Then, import the resulting utility file into your SMRT study by clicking (from the SMRT software menu) Analysis | Run Manager | Import… and following the prompts to browse to and select your .HBU or Latent Class probability file (.Pxx). Once you import your utilities, you can select Analysis | Market Simulator and begin simulations.
Moving Segmentation (Generic Survey) Data from Lighthouse to SMRT
We assume you have first followed the procedures above for estimating part-worth utilities and establishing those as a utility run in a new project within SMRT.
1. From Lighthouse Studio, export the data you wish to merge into SMRT. From the Lighthouse Studio menu, select File | Export Data | All Data…, select the respondent numbering method (the numbering method must match the method you chose when exporting the conjoint data or estimating utilities), and export the data you wish to merge into SMRT (only numeric data may be merged). Select either a .CSV file (comma-delimited text-only file) or a fixed text-only file (.TAB).
2. Within the SMRT software, open the project previously established that contains the conjoint data/utility run. Use File | Merge Variables | Add… to merge the data into your SMRT project (see the SMRT manual or online help within SMRT for details). After merging the data, if using SMRT v4.11 or earlier, you'll additionally need to specify Custom Segmentation Variables (Under Analysis | Custom Segments) if you wish to use the new variables as banner points or respondent filters during simulations.