Give people one clear offer and ask where its price feels too cheap, like a bargain, expensive and too expensive. Use the curves to choose prices for further testing.
The fictional example uses 40 answer sets for a software package priced in USD per month. The estimated acceptable range is $21 to $46. That is a range of stated perceptions in the example, not a recommendation for your product.
Make the offer specific
State what is included, who it is for, the currency and the billing period. Show the same offer before all four questions. Someone imagining an annual contract and someone imagining one month are answering different questions.
Check the order of each response
Plumeform requires nonnegative thresholds in strict order: too cheap < bargain < expensive < too expensive. Missing, reversed and tied thresholds are excluded and counted. Keep the original data so you can explain exclusions.
Name the curves and crossings
The too-cheap and bargain curves decrease as price increases; expensive and too-expensive curves increase. This implementation uses too-cheap versus inverse-bargain for the lower acceptable bound and too-expensive versus inverse-expensive for the upper bound. Crossings use linear interpolation between observed prices.
Test actual choices next
The result does not measure demand, costs or profit. Use it to narrow a follow-up study or purchase experiment. If you compare audiences, keep the offer identical and describe how each audience was recruited.
Set it up in Plumeform
1Add a Price sensitivity question (Pro to publish) and name the offer and its currency: the four questions come as one, each price held above the one before as people answer. Or open the Van Westendorp pricing template and specify the offer, currency and period.
2With the template, check the four question mappings in Settings → Fielding → Research analysis. The price-sensitivity question needs no mapping.
3Pilot the wording and numeric inputs, then publish your questionnaire.
4Read the curves in the question's results, or in Analysis for the template, after reviewing valid and excluded counts. Use the same definitions when comparing an external tool.
Different tools can use different crossing conventions. Plumeform uses the inverse-curve definitions above and the first interpolated crossing. A missing crossing is reported as unavailable. The chart samples at most 200 observed points; calculations use every observed threshold.
Example results · fictional data
From four prices to a range worth testing
40 fictional buyers priced the same software package in USD per month. All four thresholds are present and consistently ordered.
Research results
The measures behind your study
Calculated from fictional answers for this example. Unweighted; missing or invalid inputs are excluded per measure.
Solid: too cheap · Dashed: bargain · Dotted: expensive · Dash-dot: too expensive. Price units follow your questionnaire.
Acceptable range, lower
21
Acceptable range, upper
46
Indifference price
32
Equal price resistance
26
Exploratory stated prices, not a revenue forecast. Range uses the original inverse-cheap / inverse-expensive definition. Crossings use linear interpolation and the first observed crossing when there is a tie. Charts and tables show up to 200 observed price points; intersections use every point.
Curve data+
Price
Too cheap
Bargain
Expensive
Too expensive
6
100%
100%
0%
0%
8
90%
100%
0%
0%
10
80%
100%
0%
0%
12
70%
100%
0%
0%
14
60%
100%
0%
0%
16
50%
100%
0%
0%
18
40%
90%
0%
0%
20
30%
80%
0%
0%
22
20%
70%
0%
0%
24
10%
60%
0%
0%
26
0%
50%
0%
0%
28
0%
40%
0%
0%
30
0%
30%
10%
0%
32
0%
20%
20%
0%
34
0%
10%
30%
0%
36
0%
0%
40%
0%
38
0%
0%
50%
0%
40
0%
0%
60%
0%
42
0%
0%
70%
0%
44
0%
0%
80%
0%
45
0%
0%
80%
10%
46
0%
0%
90%
10%
47
0%
0%
90%
20%
48
0%
0%
100%
20%
49
0%
0%
100%
30%
51
0%
0%
100%
40%
53
0%
0%
100%
50%
55
0%
0%
100%
60%
57
0%
0%
100%
70%
59
0%
0%
100%
80%
61
0%
0%
100%
90%
63
0%
0%
100%
100%
Illustration only. Calculated from 40 invented answer sets using Plumeform's analysis code. Your results depend on the people you recruit and the answers they give.
What you can take from this
The crossings describe these buyers' price perceptions. They do not account for acquisition costs, competitors' reactions or what people would actually purchase.
What to do next
Choose a small set of prices within the range for a follow-up purchase-intent study. Keep the product description and billing period identical.