Interviews First, Conjoint Second: Building a Better Vascular Device
A conjoint is only as strong as the attributes it tests, so the work began by talking to the people who use the device every day.
A manufacturer wanted to find the best feature mix for a next-generation vascular device. It also wanted to measure willingness to pay and how the new design would compete with a rival device.
The study began with 10 one-hour qualitative interviews to test the hypotheses behind the conjoint exercise and survey design.
The main phase was a 20-minute online survey. The screener required:
Interventional radiologists only
At least six of a certain vascular procedure a year
The client's current device as their primary device
More than three years post-fellowship
The final sample was 201:130 in the US and 71 in Europe's five largest markets.
The survey included about 15 conjoint choice tasks covering deployment, repositioning, stent lengths and diameter reduction. A market simulation followed, then Gabor-Granger price testing using set price ranges for the US and Europe.
Recruiting current users was deliberate. They know the device's limits from daily use, which makes their trade-offs more meaningful when weighing incremental improvements.
The sample was large enough to compare high-volume physicians with standard users and the US with Europe. That supported segment-level findings rather than a single average.
Pairing qualitative groundwork with a conjoint design gave the client clear feature priorities, price signals and competitive scenarios for product strategy.
