A New Surgical Product

Competing with Odds and Ends in the OR

The Challenge

A surgical instrument client who offers products to the cardiothoracic surgery specialty developed a new product designed to resolve an important, frequently occurring surgical complication that is currently fixed with varying degrees of success with a variety of different approaches involving several different off-label products. The task was to understand which of its capabilities and benefits were most important to the client, and at what point would it become too expensive to justify against the rabble of competitors. Would the price of the product be justified, and if so, which of the many benefits that came from using it would be primarily responsible? Since the product offered improved outcome, reduced time, lower costs in some respects and other less tangible benefits, where was the optimal price point that enabled adoption while maximizing profitability?

The Approach

Through its exploratory research techniques, Actionable Research discovered the main focal points of value the product could bring, as well as its chief competitors. In addition, a decision was made to utilize an Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint (ACBC) method for the determination of feature and capability importance and optimal price point. Surgeons were surveyed in the US and in 4 coutries in the EU in their native languages. Data collection was completed in less than 3 weeks. The data was then analyzed and feature utilities were calculated, and price elasticity curves were drawn across the tested price spectrum, comparing the performance of the new product to the performance of alternative approaches currently being used.

The Result

The power of ACBC was evident for this project, offering clear guidance on feature importance with segment sample sizes as low as N=100. In addition, the benefits of the new product were justifiable in light of their cost, and clinical trials for the product showed statistically significant differences in efficacy in the dimensions that were shown to be most important from the ACBC results. Differences were noted between US and EU as expected. Upon this foundation, the company was able to continue development of the product and continue on the path to commercialization knowing that it would have an acceptable price point.