Speaker: John Oppenhimer, Market Researcher & Community Manager, QuestionPro
Top questions & answers from this webinar
Q: Can you add to this graph where competitive products sit price-wise? (Van Westendorp)
Answer: It’s not common to do that, but you can manually mark the price points for competitors on the graph yourself. Something important to know about Van Westendorp is that it doesn’t compare directly to competitors. The main purpose of the exercise is to evaluate how customers perceive the quality of a new product (typically, as opposed to an existing product) by answering with price points for the four questions. The data will visually provide you with a product’s price elasticity and acceptable price ranges in the case that you need to adjust the price to compete with competitor brands.
Q: Can you give a sense of what sample size is appropriate?
Answer: For using either Gabor Granger or Van Westendorp, it’s best to have at least 100 completes, unless you intend on comparing data between different segments/audiences, then you’ll want to have at least 100 completes per segment. (E.g If you want to run a study and compare on 2 different audiences, then you’ll need at least 200 completes. If you plan on comparing across four different age ranges, you’ll need to have at least 400 completes).
Q: When you show competitors with the product being tested will you show respondents their price and give them a general range of the category?
Answer: Absolutely - when you’re evaluating your product by presenting it in a competitive environment, you want the respondents to access competitor products as well as product price as if they are shopping online or in-store and having to make realistic purchase decisions.
Q: Is there a general rule of thumb for excluding outliers in Van Westendorp Pricing?
Answer: Nothing that is different from methods used for any other survey. Checking for speeders and straightliners (ex: respondents who select the same column response option in a single or multi-select matrix question.
Q: Which method this is more preferred for assessing Line Extension potential pricing wise?
Answer: For product extensions or prodigy products, you’re more often than not better off using Gabor Granger instead of Van Westendorp. With Van Westendorp you’re determining acceptable prices for a new product, whereas with Gabor Granger, because a product is part of an extension line, you already have a sense of the price range and it’s a matter of knowing at what price to set it so that most respondents would purchase at that price, and would maximize sales and ROI.
