What drives a researcher’s preferences for chemical compounds? Evidence from conjoint analysis

We investigated which attribute and attribute level affect researchers’ preferences for chemical compounds. Drawing on survey data for Korean researchers using chemical compounds provided by the Korean Chemical Bank (KCB), we conducted a conjoint analysis, through which the part-worth utility for each attribute’s level was estimated, the relative importance values of attributes were calculated, and user segmentation with different patterns was classified. The results of this study show that the structure database offers the highest part-worth utility to the researchers, followed by high new functionality, price, screening service, and drug action data provided only by the KCB. Notably, researchers view the offer of a structured database and high new functionality as more important in decision-making about the research and development (R&D) use of chemical compounds than other attributes. Furthermore, the results of user segmentation present different patterns of the use of chemical compounds: researchers group the most appealing to structure database and improved new functionality attributes. We discussed some policy and strategic implications based on the findings of this study and proposed some limitations.