Case study: How understanding patient willingness to pay in emerging markets helped identify the optimum price for a chronic disease brand

The solution
After showing a product profile to patients within the target income group, we asked their likelihood to purchase the product and their estimated frequency of purchase over 12 months at a series of prompted price points. The lowest price point tested was determined by the client’s ‘break even’ selling price and the highest price point tested was the upper limit of patients’ stated spontaneous willingness to pay in prior qualitative research. Patients were asked to assess their likelihood to purchase on a Juster scale, so we could weight their responses in order to account for overstatement in uptake. Based on these weighted responses, we created a revenue curve for the client’s product showing the revenue generated at each price point, accounting for frequency of use in a year.

The outputs
The revenue curve enabled the client to identify the revenue-optimising price for their product. By segmenting the patient population based on their willingness to pay for the product, we were also able to identify demographic, clinical and attitudinal factors that were associated with higher willingness to pay. This provided our client with guidance regarding their key target patient population the attitudes their communications would need to address in order to increase patient willingness to pay for their product.