Overview: Pricing research collects, analyzes, and interprets data to determine the optimal amount to charge for a product or service. The goal is to maximize profitability while aligning with how customers perceive value.
As a CPA with experience in Fortune 5 corporate finance and as the founder of a software company, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful and often overlooked sound pricing strategy can be. Effective pricing research gives you the clarity to make confident, data-backed decisions, whether you’re launching a new product, overhauling an existing model, or improving margins.
Pricing research isn’t just about determining what customers are willing to pay. It’s about understanding the perceived value of your products or services, identifying price sensitivity thresholds, and discovering how pricing impacts your brand positioning.
Without proper research, businesses often default to competitor-based pricing or arbitrary markups, missing opportunities to optimize their pricing strategy.
Consider these statistics:
- A 1% improvement in pricing can lead to an 11% increase in profitability (McKinsey)
- 72% of new products fail to meet their revenue targets due to ineffective pricing (Simon-Kucher & Partners 2024 Global Pricing Study)
- Only 30% of businesses conduct regular pricing research.
In this guide, we help you learn how to price a product through vetted methodologies for pricing research that you can implement immediately.
Survey-Based Pricing Research
Surveys are one of the most versatile and cost-effective ways to gather pricing insights. When properly designed, they can reveal customer price perceptions, willingness to pay, and value associations.
There are four most effective survey approaches for pricing research:
- Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter
- Gabor-Granger Pricing Model
- Conjoint Analysis
Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter
The Van Westendorp methodology uses four key questions to determine acceptable price ranges:
- What price would you consider this product/service too expensive? (too expensive)
- What price would you consider this product/service so expensive that you would not consider buying it? (expensive)
- What price would you consider this product/service a bargain? (bargain)
- What price would you consider this product/service so inexpensive that you would question its quality? (too cheap)
By plotting these responses on a graph, you can identify:
- The optimal price point (intersection of “too cheap” and “too expensive”)
- The indifference price point (intersection of “bargain” and “expensive”)
- The acceptable price range
Pro tip: Include product descriptions and visuals in your survey to ensure respondents understand precisely what they’re evaluating.
Works best for: New product launches and services with few direct comparisons, such as innovative software solutions, subscription services, or specialized consulting packages.
Gabor Granger Technique
The Gabor Granger approach determines price elasticity by asking respondents if they would purchase a product at various price points:
- Present your product or service with a specific price
- Ask if the respondent would purchase at that price (yes/no)
- If yes, increase the price and repeat until they decline
- If no, decrease the price and repeat until they accept
The resulting data helps you identify the maximum price acceptable to various market segments and estimate demand at different price points.
For example, ask: “Would you purchase this software subscription at $49 monthly?”
- If yes: “Would you purchase it at $59 monthly?”
- If no: “Would you purchase it at $39 monthly?”
Works best for: Standard consumer products with clear competitors, like household items, food products, or standardized services. Customers can easily make yes/no purchase decisions based primarily on price.
Conjoint Analysis
Conjoint analysis is useful for products with multiple features or service tiers. This technique:
- Presents respondents with different product configurations (varying features and prices)
- Asks them to make choices or rank preferences
- Uses statistical analysis to determine the value customers place on each feature
Conjoint analysis reveals which features justify premium pricing and which have minimal impact on willingness to pay. It’s beneficial when developing tiered pricing models.
Pro tip: Limit the number of attributes tested to prevent survey fatigue (ideally 4-6 characteristics with 2-5 levels each).
Works best for: Software packages, mobile phone plans, or customizable professional services. Great for determining which specific features justify premium pricing.
Price Laddering
This technique explores the psychological aspects of pricing by asking a series of “why” questions:
- Present a price point
- Ask if the respondent would pay that amount
- Ask why or why not
- Probe deeper with follow-up questions to uncover underlying value perceptions
Price laddering helps identify the emotional and functional benefits customers associate with your pricing, which can help with marketing messaging.
Works best for: Luxury goods, premium services, or brand-focused offerings where emotional and psychological factors heavily influence purchasing decisions.
Experimental Pricing Research
While surveys ask customers what they might do, experimental methods observe what they do when faced with real pricing decisions.
A/B Testing
In this methodology, you present two distinct customer segments with different pricing options for the same product or service: Group A sees one price point while Group B sees another.
This creates a controlled experiment where the only variable is the price, allowing you to observe actual purchasing behavior rather than relying solely on what customers say they might do.
When implementing A/B pricing tests, focus on tracking critical performance indicators like conversion rates, average order value, revenue per visitor, and cart abandonment rates. This will give you hard evidence of how price changes affect customer behavior.
For accurate results:
- Run tests with statistically significant sample sizes
- Test one variable at a time
- Use random assignment
- Run tests long enough to account for seasonality (at least 2-4 weeks)
Pro tip: For B2B companies where each deal is significant, consider testing different pricing proposals with similar prospects rather than randomizing on your website.
Price Bracketing
This technique presents customers with three pricing options:
- Low-priced option (entry-level)
- Mid-priced option (target option)
- High-priced option (premium)
The goal is to make the target option seem like the best value. You can gauge price sensitivity and optimize your pricing tiers by analyzing which option customers select. Many customers avoid the cheapest and most expensive options, gravitating toward the safe middle option.
Sequential Price Testing
Sequential price testing is an alternative to simultaneous A/B testing and works well if you want to optimize your pricing strategy over time.
First, you establish a baseline price and measure customer response. Then, you make a strategic adjustment—either raising or lowering the price—and carefully track the impact on key metrics like conversion rates, average order value, and total revenue.
While slower than A/B testing, sequential testing can be more practical for businesses with limited traffic or where simultaneous testing isn’t feasible.
Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing is a strategy where prices adjust in real-time based on variables like demand, inventory, competitor pricing, user behavior, or even time of day. While commonly associated with tech giants like Amazon or Uber, dynamic pricing is increasingly accessible to smaller businesses thanks to modern pricing tools and APIs.
Unlike A/B testing or sequential pricing, which rely on controlled experiments, dynamic pricing engines react instantly to changing conditions—maximizing revenue opportunities as they arise.
Common Types of Dynamic Pricing:
Demand-Based: Prices rise when demand increases (e.g., Uber surge pricing or ticket platforms during peak events).
Time-Based – Prices adjust by hour, day, or season (e.g., hotel rates, booking platforms).
Inventory-Based: As supply decreases, prices increase to protect margin (e.g., low-stock notifications trigger price bumps).
Behavioral-Based – Prices adjust based on user engagement, past purchases, or session activity (commonly used in SaaS and e-commerce).
Rule-Based: If product stock < 20, increase price by 10%.
Pro Tip: Tools that automate dynamic pricing are available for larger retailers or enterprise use cases, but most businesses benefit far more from foundational research before investing in automation. As your business scales, consider building simple in-house algorithms to create dynamic pricing models tailored to your data. This offers far more flexibility and control than most off-the-shelf tools can provide.
Market-Based Pricing Research
To position your product or service, you must understand how your pricing fits the broader market context.
Competitor Pricing Analysis
Competitor pricing analysis involves systematically gathering data on competitor pricing:
- Identify direct and indirect competitors
- Document their pricing models (subscription, one-time, freemium, bundle, etc.)
- Track their price points for comparable offerings
- Note any discounting strategies or promotions
- Analyze how their pricing aligns with their positioning
Gathering reliable data on competitor pricing typically combines both public and behind-the-scenes intelligence gathering, like:
- Mystery shopping — Involves experiencing your customers’ pricing as genuine customers would. This approach helps you understand the listed prices and the buying experience, including discounts, package deals, or upsell attempts. This might mean signing up for a free trial to understand the whole pricing structure for subscription services.
- Public pricing pages — You research pricing through readily accessible information about competitor base rates and pricing structures. Monitoring competitor pricing pages regularly lets you learn about patterns in pricing updates and seasonal promotions.
- Sales team intelligence — Your sales team regularly hears feedback about competitor pricing during deals and negotiations, including details about special offers, discounting thresholds, and deal sweeteners that may not be public knowledge. Create a simple process for sales teams to document and share.
- Industry reports — Reports by market research firms and trade associations often contain detailed pricing analyses that would be tough to compile. They typically include average price points, market trends, and sometimes specific competitor information that helps you benchmark your pricing strategy against broader market movements.
- Partner or supplier insights — Your partners and suppliers can provide unique visibility into competitor strategies (especially if you share distribution channels or supply chain partners). Distributors, retailers, and suppliers often work with multiple competing products and can share intelligence about pricing movements throughout your industry ecosystem.
Price Perception Mapping
Price perception mapping surveys are tools used to understand how customers perceive the price and value of a product or service compared to competitors. The goal is to map out where your brand stands in the consumer’s mind on two main axes:
- X-axis: Perceived price (low to high) — Is your product considered cheap, reasonably priced, or expensive?
- Y-axis: Perceived value/quality (low to high) — Is your product considered low quality, average, or premium?
Respondents are shown your product/service and competing ones and get questions like:
- “How would you rate the price of this product?”
- “Do you believe this product is good value for money?”
- “Which brand offers the best quality for the price?”
This creates a perceptual map that helps businesses spot pricing mismatches, identify opportunities for positioning, and understand competitive threats.
Trade Area and Location-Based Pricing
Prices aren’t one-size-fits-all. Customers in different geographic regions may have dramatically different levels of price sensitivity based on income, competition, local expectations, and even cultural norms. Trade area and location-based pricing research helps uncover these regional differences so you can adjust pricing by market—without guessing.
Start by collecting geographic data alongside your pricing research. This could be as simple as asking for ZIP codes in a survey or geotagging user responses. Then, overlay that data with external variables such as:
- Census income data
- Population density
- Competitor presence in the region
- Cost of living indexes
By comparing results from tools like Van Westendorp or Gabor-Granger across different regions or cities, you can identify location-specific willingness to pay.
Imagine you run a SaaS product and run Gabor-Granger pricing research in several regions. You discover customers in Austin, TX are comfortable paying $129/month.
Rather than limiting that insight to Austin alone, you analyze key demographic and economic traits:
- Median income: $85,000+
- High concentration of tech professionals
- Urban/suburban mix
- High cost of living
- Above-average education levels
Next, you identify other U.S. markets with similar profiles—like Raleigh, NC; Boulder, CO; and parts of the Seattle metro. Using external data from the U.S. Census, IPUMS, or ESRI Business Analyst, you cluster these areas into a pricing zone.
Even if you haven’t run pricing surveys in those secondary markets, you can confidently apply a $129/month pricing tier based on similar demand profiles.
This approach:
- Extends the reach of your pricing data
- Reduces the need for surveys in every region
- Supports smart regional pricing without guesswork
Finance-Driven Pricing Models
Even the best pricing strategies must be grounded in financial reality. These models focus on internal cost structures, margin goals, and ROI targets to ensure your pricing supports long-term profitability.
Your accounting systems need to produce clean, accurate data to build effective finance-driven pricing. That includes reliable COGS tracking, overhead allocation, and revenue categorization. This data powers critical calculations like break-even volume, contribution margin, and return on investment.
Do you need help organizing your cost structure or building pricing models? We offer professional services to help businesses translate accounting data into pricing intelligence. Schedule a consultation to learn more.
Cost-Plus Pricing
Add a fixed markup to your total costs (COGS + overhead) to ensure every sale contributes to profit. This method is simple and predictable. It works well for services, manufacturing, and professional consulting.
Limitation: Ignores customer perception or market dynamics
Break-Even Pricing
Set prices based on how many units you need to sell to cover your fixed and variable costs. This is useful for launching new products, promotions, or market entry. Great for scenario modeling (price X, sell Y = profit Z)
But this method doesn’t guarantee margin—it only covers costs.
Target ROI Pricing
The pricing would be set to meet a desired return on investment based on projected sales volume and total costs. This method is often used in consulting, SaaS, or capital-heavy industries. It encourages strategic thinking beyond one-time sales. If not tested properly, this method can result in higher prices than the market will bear, so prices using this method should constantly be monitored.
Tiered Pricing
Create product tiers with built-in margin goals—higher tiers yield higher profit per unit. This method is common in DTC, SaaS, and packaged services and helps structure “good-better-best” pricing ladders. Price packages must include clear value differentiation to use this method.
Designing Effective Pricing Studies
The quality of your pricing research depends heavily on your survey’s design. A poorly constructed study can introduce bias, reduce data reliability, or completely miss the fundamental drivers of willingness to pay. Use the following best practices to ensure your pricing surveys produce clean, actionable insights:
- Start with screening questions – Ensure respondents match your target audience. Ask qualifying questions upfront to filter out irrelevant participants.
- Provide adequate product context – Use detailed descriptions, images, or videos, so respondents clearly understand what they’re evaluating. Ambiguity leads to noise in your results.
- Use a mix of question types – Combine direct pricing questions (e.g., Van Westendorp or Gabor-Granger) with indirect value measures. One advanced strategy is to run a MaxDiff to identify which features matter most and then segment pricing questions based on those responses.
- Include pricing reference points – Help respondents anchor their responses by referencing similar products or prior pricing they’ve encountered—beneficial when testing new products.
- Segment questions by buyer persona – Different customer types often value different things. Tailor your questions—or your analysis—by segment to uncover more precise pricing insights.
- Add open-ended questions – Capture qualitative data on why customers feel a product is under or over-priced. This can reveal emotional triggers and messaging angles for your offer.
- Keep it concise – Avoid survey fatigue by focusing on high-impact questions. Prioritize clarity, relevance, and flow—especially when testing more advanced methods like conjoint or price laddering.
Pro Tip: Test your survey internally before launch. Even one unclear question can distort your results across hundreds of respondents.
Remember that pricing research isn’t a one-time event but an ongoing process. Markets evolve, competitors adjust, and customer perceptions shift. Businesses that consistently outperform their competitors make pricing research a core component of their strategic planning process.
Common Pricing Terminology
Understanding core pricing terms helps you interpret research results and build sustainable models. Here are key concepts every business should know:
- COGS (Cost of Goods Sold): The direct costs required to produce and deliver your product or service—including materials, labor, and shipping.
- Contribution Margin: What’s left from each sale after subtracting variable costs. It’s the money available to cover fixed costs and generate profit.
- Break-Even Point: The sales volume where total revenue equals total cost—used to determine how much you need to sell to cover expenses.
- Price Elasticity: How sensitive customer demand is to price changes. Products with high elasticity lose sales quickly when prices rise.
- Price Sensitivity: A customer’s responsiveness to price differences or changes—often varies by persona or market.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The total revenue a customer is expected to generate over their entire relationship with your business. Essential for setting sustainable price points.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The average cost of acquiring a new customer—including marketing, sales, and onboarding expenses.
- ARPU (Average Revenue per User): Total revenue divided by number of customers. Helpful in evaluating pricing tiers, upsells, and monetization efficiency.
- Churn Rate: The percentage of customers who cancel or stop buying over a given period. High churn often signals pricing misalignment or weak value delivery.
Pricing Execution: How to Gameplan
Pricing Strategy Checklist
Use this checklist to ensure that you have covered all your bases and that your data is well organized and prepared.
- Have you identified your target customer segments?
- Have you captured feedback for prices? (Gabor-Granger or Van Westendorp)?
- Are you tracking key metrics like CAC, CLV, ARPU, and churn?
- Do you have margin goals tied to product tiers?
- Have you reviewed competitor pricing and positioning?
- Are you pricing consistently across regions or using trade area data?
Pricing KPIs You Should Track Monthly
Tracking these metrics will allow you to identify strategies that are working or not.
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
- Churn rate
- CAC payback period
- Gross margin by tier
- Price testing win rates (A/B test results)
- Revenue per customer segment
Decision-Making Framework for Choosing a Pricing Model
Use this simple flowchart to pick a pricing strategy based on your project or objective:
If you’re launching a new product → Start with Van Westendorp
If you already have customers → Run Gabor-Granger with segmentation
If you sell multiple feature sets → Use Conjoint + tiered pricing
If you’re B2B with complex sales → Start with cost-plus + value discovery
If you’re entering new regions → Survey data + historical prices + trade areas
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