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Mavera Surfaces Used

The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter uses four questions to find optimal pricing. This playbook adapts those questions to Mavera’s Slider question type, running them across budget-segment personas to produce a synthetic price sensitivity analysis.

What Value Does Mavera Add?


When to Use This

  • You’re setting launch pricing for a new product or feature and need segment-specific sensitivity data.
  • You’re considering a price increase and want to estimate the elasticity before announcing.
  • You’re designing tiered pricing and need to validate where tier boundaries should fall.
  • You’re entering a new market and need a pricing anchor based on local buyer expectations.

What You Need


The Van Westendorp Framework

The original Van Westendorp asks four questions. Mavera adapts each to a Slider question type: The intersections of these four curves define:
  • Point of Marginal Cheapness (PMC): Where “too cheap” meets “bargain”
  • Point of Marginal Expensiveness (PME): Where “too expensive” meets “expensive but worth it”
  • Optimal Price Point (OPP): Where “too cheap” meets “too expensive”
  • Acceptable Price Range: Between PMC and PME

Architecture


The Flow

1

Define your product and price range

Write a clear product description and set a realistic price range for the Slider min/max. Too narrow misses the range; too wide reduces precision.
2

Create 4 budget-segment personas

Build personas representing distinct budget tiers: bootstrapped startup, growth-stage, mid-market, and enterprise. Each brings a different price sensitivity.
3

Run the pricing Focus Group

40 respondents across 4 personas (10 per persona). 4 Van Westendorp Slider questions + 1 Likert (value-for-money) + 1 Open-Ended (pricing model preference).
4

Poll for completion

Pricing focus groups with 40 respondents and 6 questions typically complete in 5-10 minutes.
5

Calculate price sensitivity curves

Extract Slider medians and distributions. Compute the four intersection points.
6

Generate the pricing report

Use Chat with structured output to synthesize findings into a pricing recommendation with segment breakdowns.

Code: Full Pricing Research Pipeline

Setup


Stage 1 — Create Budget-Segment Personas


Stage 2 — Run Pricing Focus Group

Six questions: 4 Van Westendorp Sliders, 1 Likert (value-for-money), 1 Open-Ended (pricing model).
Set Slider max_value high enough to capture the true ceiling. If most “too expensive” responses cluster at the max, your range is too narrow and you’ll miss price points.

Stage 3 — Calculate Price Sensitivity

Extract Slider values and compute the Van Westendorp intersection points.

Stage 4 — Generate Pricing Report


Running the Full Pipeline


Example Output


Variations

Create personas representing your current customer base. Test the proposed increase against their current price anchor:
Add questions that price individual features to find which drive willingness-to-pay:
Run the same study with region-specific personas (US, EU, APAC, LATAM) to set geographic pricing:
Include competitor pricing in the context so personas anchor relative to known alternatives:

Credits Estimate

For a quick directional read, start with N=20 (5 per segment) at roughly half the cost. Scale to N=40+ for tier-worthy data you’d put in a pricing deck.

See Also

Focus Groups

Slider, Likert, and all 12 question types

Positioning Workshop

Test positioning alongside pricing

Market Entry Research

Research the market before pricing

Brand Perception Audit

Understand brand perception context for pricing

Persona Debate

Opposing personas evaluate pricing at different points

Credits & Budget

Track and manage credit usage