Product Clinic
Automotive Car Clinic
Conjoint & Share SimulationPrice, Trims & Cannibalization150 to 300 respondents4 to 8 vehicles in the hallHoldout validation
What is it?
A car clinic is the dress rehearsal for a launch. We place your vehicle (prototype, mock-up or final unit) side by side with 4 to 8 competitors in a controlled, confidential hall, where real category buyers evaluate exterior, interior, equipment, brand and price in the same order as the real decision: first the car attracts, then the spec convinces, the brand weighs in and, at the end, the price closes or kills the deal. The industry has used this methodology for 90 years, since GM's first opinion laboratory in the 1930s, and pre-market models of the same family predict share within 1 to 2 percentage points (Urban & Katz, Journal of Marketing Research).
Launching a car costs billions. Listening to the customer first costs a clinic.
Who it is for
Automakers about to launch or restyle a vehicle and the teams behind that decision: Product Planning defining trims, equipment and take rates; Pricing measuring what the market pays, model against model; and Market Intelligence estimating volume, sales origin and portfolio cannibalization risk.
What we answer
- Does the car attract? How exterior and interior design compares with competitors, point by point, from bumper to trunk.
- What is it worth? What price the market accepts, the elasticity, and how much the brand adds to or subtracts from the deal.
- Which trim wins? Which combination of equipment and price maximizes demand, and the expected take rate for each trim.
- Where does the volume come from? How much comes from competitors, from new entrants, and from other models of your own brand.
Benefits and results
What you take to your business
Set prices with an elasticity curve per trim and competitive scenario simulation, not with guesswork
Protect the portfolio: the cannibalization analysis separates what the launch conquers from what it merely transfers
Turn the strengths and weaknesses buyers point out into the mid-cycle priority list
Work with calibrated intent: only ~30% of "definitely would buy" convert, so we measure choice instead of loose claims
Bring the customer's voice to headquarters, with an executive report in English when the game is global
What we deliver
Elasticity curves and brand premium: demand at each price point, with and without your brand on the car. The gap between the curves is the value your brand sustains (or the discount it charges).
Simulated preference share: how your vehicle performs against the competitive set before it exists on the streets. The simulator stays with you after the study to test price and trim scenarios.
Source of volume and cannibalization: where each sale of the new vehicle comes from, between conquest from competitors, new entrants and transfers from your own portfolio.
How it works
Buyers recruited by segment, with quotas mirroring registrations, evaluate the vehicles in the order of the real decision: first impression without brand or price, detailed evaluation, progressive reveal of specs, brand and price, conjoint and focus groups. One in four launches succeeds; the clinic tests the car, the price and the trims with the people who will buy, before the market decides for you.
Confidential hall
4 to 8 comparable vehicles and end-to-end prototype secrecy: NDA for everyone present, metal detector and a camera-free hall.
Conjoint and Build-a-Vehicle
Choices between configurations and prices reveal elasticity, brand premium and take rate per trim, with holdout validation and separate reads per subgroup (200+).
Simulator and executive report
Focus groups with accepters and rejecters explain the why behind the numbers; the share simulator stays with you and the executive report is bilingual.
We answer business questions by giving consumers a voice, using methods grounded in scientific evidence.
Brands that trusted Okiar to answer their business questions
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