How effective are surveys in determining pricing and demand for new consumer products?
Surveys are generally useless for determining either pricing or demand for consumer products. Generally speaking, pricing is impossible to determine through a survey since customers have both (a) inherent biases and (b) poor self-prediction (other than, I’d never do that.) Frequently, surveys lead to a set of questions that say: do you find this Z thing valuable? Yes. OK, would you pay for Z? Yes. OK, would you pay range 1,2,3,4? Picks 2 or 3 not to be controversial. Then, when confronted with actually paying money, realizes that they’d not make this purchase right now, maybe not ever. There are specific exceptions. For example, on pricing, you can use surveys to determine if people find the product/service X more valuable than product/service Y. It will be very difficult to use survey data to assess the difference in $, but you can assess – known quantity A is better than known quantity B. Assessing innovation (demand for new consumer products) is even harder. Consumers can be either
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