Pressure-test a launch price, a new tier or a packaging change before it goes on the pricing page. See the range people would pay, what they compare it to, and where the price stops making sense.
Price testing answers one question: what’s the right price? Use it once you know the concept lands and you need a number you can defend.
Candor asks the same four Van Westendorp questions, but of synthetic participants rather than real buyers. A survey gives you a sized price curve. A synthetic price test gives you the reasoning behind each range: what people compare the price to, which features they treat as worth paying for, and where the price stops making sense. Use it to narrow the price points worth putting in front of real buyers in a formal study.
Run price testing when you’re setting a price that’s hard to walk back: the first price for a new product, a tier restructure, or a change that moves features between plans.
Test the concept first. People price something they already understand far better than something described to them moments earlier, and pricing feedback on an idea that doesn’t fit is misleading.
the concept hasn’t been tested for fit yet (run concept testing), or you need a statistically sized price curve for the final call. That’s a formal pricing study with real buyers, and a synthetic price test is a good way to decide what goes into it.
Value comes first and your number comes last, so participants aren’t anchored on it.
The concept’s value is re-established. A participant who hasn’t seen it has to show they understand it before any pricing question.
What they spend on the problem today, and for business buyers, who approves a purchase like this.
Their own guess at what it should cost, then the four Van Westendorp questions: too cheap to trust, a bargain, getting expensive, and too expensive to consider.
Your price, named for the first time if you set one. Then how it trades against the value and the alternatives they’d weigh it against, and when there’s time, what would make them walk away or say yes.
When you price several concepts, one of them, picked at random for each participant, gets the full interview and the others are priced relative to it.
A report built around the price. Each section appears when the interviews give it something to show.
The report also shows where value didn’t match the price and how your going-in assumptions held up. A caveat whose sentences change with your run’s results sits under the learnings, near the top of the report, more cautious when the signal was weaker. Read it before you lean on the numbers.
Price the idea people already want. A concept test first is what makes the price reactions worth trusting.
How you state the value shapes what people will pay. Test the words as well as the number.
Narrow the price points and packaging worth putting in front of real buyers.
Reliable enough to narrow the decision, not to set the final number. Synthetic price testing shows where participants anchor, which features they treat as worth paying for, and where they balk. Treat the absolute numbers as directional and the spread and the comparisons as the most useful output. The report carries a caveat whose sentences change with your run's results, more cautious when the signal was weaker, so read it before you lean on a figure. Then confirm the price points that survive with real buyers.
No. Candor asks the Van Westendorp questions, but of synthetic participants, so what you get is the reasoning behind the ranges rather than a sized curve from real buyers. That makes it a good step before a formal study: it shows why a tier feels expensive, what makes a bundle feel like a deal, and which features people would pay extra for. Use it to narrow the price points worth testing, then run the formal study on those.
Yes, up to 4 in one price test. Each option has to be a concept from an earlier research plan in the same study, because people price something they already know far better than something described to them moments earlier. One option, picked at random for each participant, gets the full pricing interview, and the others are priced relative to it. The report adds a read on how the options compared.
The interview follows how each audience buys. For business buyers it covers current spend, who approves a purchase at this level, the business case, how they'd want it packaged, and who would champion it internally. For consumers it covers the trade-offs inside a personal budget, the everyday things they compare the price to, and how the price makes them feel. Participants are built differently too, because Candor models business buyers and consumers as separate domains.
The way you'd ship it. Include the currency, the cadence (per month, per seat, per transaction) and any framing you'd use in market. Participants react to the framing, not an abstract number, so a price stripped of its context gets reactions to a price nobody would ever see. Your price is only named late in the interview, after participants have given their own guess and ranges, so they aren't anchored on it.
Start with a free project, or walk through Candor with us first.