Pricing Research

It's a method that asks buyers four questions about a product: at what price it would be too expensive, too cheap to trust, expensive but still worth considering, and a bargain. Plotting the answers together produces a range of acceptable prices and an indifference point. It's most useful early, when you need to know the plausible range before testing specific numbers.

Van Westendorp gives you an acceptable range and works when you have no price yet. Gabor-Granger tests purchase likelihood at specific price points and gives you a demand curve, so it works when you're choosing between candidate prices. Many studies run Van Westendorp first to find the range, then Gabor-Granger inside it.

When the question is about packaging as much as price. Conjoint forces buyers to trade features against cost, which tells you what each feature is actually worth to them. It's the right method for designing tiers and bundles, and it needs a larger sample than the other two.

Van Westendorp and Gabor-Granger work with a couple of hundred responses per segment. Conjoint needs more, often three to four hundred per segment, because respondents are evaluating many combinations. If you're comparing several segments, each one needs its own adequate sample.

Four to six weeks for most studies, from design through fielding to final analysis. Conjoint studies take longer because the design work is more involved and the sample is larger.

It depends on the method, the sample size, how hard your buyers are to recruit, and incentive levels. A single-segment Van Westendorp study costs the least, and a multi-segment conjoint study costs the most. We provide a fixed-scope quote after an initial consultation.

Yes. B2B pricing research needs care because the person answering may not control the budget, so screening for actual purchasing authority matters more than title. Our team has recruited VP through C-suite decision-makers across the US, Europe, and Asia for exactly this kind of work.

Direct questions about price invite that answer, so these methods don't ask directly. Van Westendorp asks about credibility as well as cost, and conjoint forces respondents to give something up to get a lower price. Both produce answers that predict behavior better than asking what somebody would pay.

Often, yes. Published pricing frequently differs from what appears on a real quote. Requesting quotes and demos as a prospective buyer brings back real numbers including how much they'll discount, and buyers who evaluated several vendors usually remember what they were quoted.

Yes, and it usually should be. Pricing is often run alongside competitive analysis and customer research, so you learn what buyers will pay, what alternatives they're weighing, and why they value what they value, from a single project.