Preferences of MBA Graduates for Attributes of a Hypothetical Doctorate in Business Programme: A Conjoint Analysis in Digos City, Philippines

Abstract

This study examined the stated preferences of MBA graduates in Digos City, Philippines, for selected attributes of a hypothetical doctorate in business programme. A quantitative, cross-sectional, rank-based full-profile conjoint survey was administered electronically between December 2025 and January 2026 to 150 MBA graduates aged 25-55 years. Respondents ranked 36 hypothetical programme profiles constructed from four attributes: programme location, learning support, faculty profile and schedule. Aggregate main-effects part-worth utilities were estimated using the Conjoint procedure in IBM SPSS Statistics, and relative attribute importance was calculated from the range of utilities within each attribute. Faculty profile had the highest relative importance (29.0%), followed by schedule (25.1%), learning support (24.3%) and programme location (21.6%). The largest positive utilities within the tested attributes were observed for faculty with combined academic and industry expertise (5.666), research mentorship and publication opportunities (3.823), weekend-only delivery (3.507) and fully online delivery (2.198). The highest predicted total utility (31.643) corresponded to a fully online programme offering research mentorship and publication support, faculty with combined academic and industry expertise and weekend-only delivery. Agreement between observed and estimated rankings was high for fitted profiles (Pearson's r = .967; Kendall's tau = .875), while the holdout coefficient was lower but positive (Kendall's tau = .701). These results provide exploratory local evidence about conditional stated preferences. Because the profiles were hypothetical, several attribute levels represented bundled programme features, and important factors such as tuition, accreditation, programme duration and institutional reputation were not included, the findings should inform further programme feasibility assessment rather than be interpreted as forecasts of actual enrolment.