Conjoint Analysis/Discrete Choice
This growing family of techniques offers the only true quantitative approach to understanding what people will do in response to different product, service, and program offerings.
Product/Service Design
Conjoint analysis is the natural choice for identifying optimal new product designs and service enhancements. DSS has developed and executed conjoint studies for all types of health insurance and health care-related projects. Whether evaluating benefits choices for consumer-driven health plans, value-based benefit plans and Medicare savings accounts, optimizing benefits in a health insurance exchange environment or bundling the best programs and services for wellness programs and ancillary offerings, DSS knows how to select the right attributes and levels from a wide array of available options, producing a conjoint exercise that is challenging, but not overwhelming or too complicated to accurately estimate preferences and overall demand.
Pricing
Several approaches can be used to estimate price sensitivity, but conjoint analysis has proven to be the most effective technique. Brand Price Tradeoffs that focus exclusively on the relationship between brand and price and discrete choice exercises that intertwine price and brand with key design characteristics are frequently employed. Van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity Meter and Price Laddering are also used in conjunction with conjoint analysis to provide a broader picture of price sensitivity.
Cost Value Analysis
One of the most effective ways of interpreting conjoint analysis results is to create cost-value charts for each attribute. Cost-value charts compare the perceived value of each benefit with the cost to deliver that benefit. When perceived value is higher than actual cost, you have identified an opportunity to add value to a product or to charge an elevated price for the benefit. Cost-value charts can be included with any conjoint project to give you a visual method of identifying opportunities and weaknesses and quantifying the relative value of each benefit tested. On insurance products, costs are represented by the estimated actuarial cost to deliver each benefit or the relative difference between each benefit tested. For other products and services, cost is defined as the estimated price to deliver the benefit as defined.
Market Simulation
Conjoint data is optimally designed to simulate overall market demand and preferences for specific products and services. DSS provides clients with unlimited access to its Dominator 2020 market simulator tool. Dominator 2020 can be used to estimate demand under a wide variety of scenarios, calibrating simulations of existing markets to account for the impact of lower awareness levels, unequal distribution channels and promotions, or projecting demand for new products and services that did not existing prior to introducing them to the marketplace during a conjoint survey. With our market simulator, your product and service designs are only limited by your imagination and the attributes and levels selected for the conjoint exercise driving the data. You can look at demand for products and services across an entire market and by any population subgroups of interest.
Brand Value
Brand equity or brand value is best measured with the use of conjoint analysis. By forcing tradeoffs with brand as one of the attributes, the value of each brand can be derived separately from its specific features and selling price. Whether using a discrete choice or Brand Price Tradeoff exercise, the utilities calculated for each tested brand and the relative sensitivity to changes in price are used to estimate brand value. Brand value can be plotted for customers and non-customers and across any population subgroups of interest.
Health Insurance Exchanges and Consumer Behavior
To maximize your opportunities under PPACA (health care reform), you need to understand how your products will perform within the individual and small group health insurance exchanges. Brand value, product design, pricing and risk-based segmentation all come into play within these exchanges. The objective is to get noticed amongst the wide array of competitive products, differentiate yourself on dimensions that are most relevant to the market and attract the best customers available. DSS has conducted studies that attack each of these aspects independently and in unison to help our clients optimize their exchange strategies.