Genetic algorithms for product design: how well do they really work?

Recently, Balakrishnan and Jacob (1996) have proposed the use of Genetic Algorithms (GA) to solve the problem of identifying an optimal single new product using conjoint data. Here we extend and evaluate the GA approach with regard to the more general problem of product line design. We consider profit contribution as a firm's economic criterion to evaluate product design decisions and illustrate how the genetic operators work to find the product line with maximum profit contribution. In a Monte Carlo simulation, we assess the performance of the GA methodology in comparison to Green and Krieger's (1985) greedy heuristic.