Does a Causal Experiment Match a Fielded Conjoint Study? The Claret Fish-Preference Replication
A causal experiment on Spanish consumers' fish preferences reached 87% of the measured human ceiling (0.832 of 0.959; mean 0.73 across the 43 studies passing design filters) against Claret, Guerrero, and Aguirre's 2012 conjoint study, per the causal fidelity paper. For a CPG or food and retail insights leader, that number is one data point of directional agreement, not proof the method generalizes to a new product or population without its own check.
The choice Claret, Guerrero, and Aguirre studied
The original researchers ran a conjoint experiment on which fish characteristics move a Spanish shopper's choice: country of origin, how the fish was obtained, storage condition, and purchase price. Their published result, reported by EurekAlert, found that Spanish consumers preferred national fish over imported fish, with obtaining method, storage, and price as the other ranked factors.
What the replication compared
A matched causal experiment ran the same four attributes through Subconscious's experiment design and compared the resulting preference ranking against the original human conjoint ordering.
| Study | Population | Method | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claret, Guerrero, and Aguirre (2012), Food Quality and Preference | Human respondents | Fielded conjoint analysis | Ranked origin, obtaining method, storage condition, and price |
| Matched Subconscious experiment | Simulated Spanish consumer population | Causal choice experiment on the same four attributes | 87% of the measured human ceiling (0.832 of 0.959) against the human ranking |
A fidelity level this high says the two orderings agree on which attributes mattered most and least. It does not say the two studies agreed on the size of any single preference.
Why this matters before committing a research budget
An insights leader who mistakes a single directional replication for a general accuracy claim risks two errors: trusting a simulated ranking on a product or market it hasn't been checked against, or dismissing a method that in fact reproduces established human preference orders when checked. One spends budget on a study that didn't need commissioning; the other writes off a method before it was tested on the category that mattered.
Reading the correlation without overreaching
Treat this 87% fidelity figure as evidence that this one causal experiment tracked the direction of a single 2012 study, drawn from a mean of 0.73 across the 43 studies passing design filters. It doesn't establish accuracy across other product categories, and it isn't a substitute for commissioning a new human study on a live product decision with commercial stakes attached.
Where to take this next
The replication leaderboard documents this kind of check; see the case studies page for this study's writeup. A team weighing whether to run its own matched check before a launch decision can see how that process works on how we work.
