Pricing Research Without Guesswork: Van Westendorp in Practice

Why "what would you pay?" fails

Asked directly, respondents anchor low, negotiate with the questionnaire, or name a number to be polite. Direct willingness-to-pay questions produce answers; they rarely produce evidence.

The four Van Westendorp questions

The Price Sensitivity Meter asks each respondent four prices for the same product:

• At what price would it be so cheap you'd doubt its quality?
• At what price would it be a bargain?
• At what price does it start to feel expensive?
• At what price is it too expensive to consider?

Plotting the cumulative curves yields an acceptable price range and an optimal price point — a corridor grounded in where resistance actually starts, not in a single averaged guess.

Reading the chart honestly

Van Westendorp gives you a corridor, not a forecast. It won't tell you demand at a price — for that you graduate to conjoint. It also needs a real base behind it: our implementation shows the n= on the curve and applies the same base-size guardrails as every other chart.

When to use it

Early-stage pricing, new markets, or a sanity check on a repricing decision — anywhere the honest question is "what range is even acceptable?" rather than "which exact price maximizes revenue?".