> Please evaluate the product on the following scale (1=very bad...7=very good).
Well, in this case I would recommend to simply put the product description (pimped with HTML) as text or instruction into a scale question (plus one Item for the rating, you can set to display this in a single line).
You definitely won't need prepare_input() or %input:...% to implement this design :)
> in order to activate the internal variables, which how I understood it subsequently allows me to measure their influence on the rating.
You do not "measure" the influence, but infer it from patterns in the data. What you do when you're data is collected is to compute a regression model to estimate the influence of each variable on the rating.
What you need for that is either a multi-level design (a bit overcomplex for that) or a restructured data set with one column for the product (was: variable number), one for the rating, and one for the CASE number, e.g.
1 7 123
2 5 123
3 6 123
4 7 123
...
1 5 124
2 6 124
3 2 124
...
And then in SPSS you recode the 1 to 8 in the first colum into 3 variables describing your independent variables. That's all you need to compute the regression model.
If we find some time, we will implement a conjoint module. But as long as this is done, it's not that hard to realize.