This paper provides a method for nonparametrically modeling the relationship between consumer preference for product features, such as reliability or durability, and covariates that describe consumers and how they use the product. This relationship is of interest to firms designing and...

It has been noticed by several authors that there is a small but non-zero probability that the GCV estimate [lambda] of the smoothing parameter in spline and related smoothing problems will be extremely small, leading to gross undersmoothing. We obtain an upper bound to the probability that the...