Describe the offer, audience, decision, and prices to test. Makeform turns that brief into a price survey with screening, price-perception questions, willingness-to-pay measures, purchase context, and editable segmentation fields. Learn how respondents interpret value without turning the survey into a sales pitch.
Send price survey responses to Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the price survey builder
Choose the closest research situation, then replace the sample offer, audience, currency, and prices. These structures are builder examples, not findings or recommended prices.
Prompt ready4 formats
Audience
Qualified buyers who manage small teams
Format
Van Westendorp price-sensitivity survey
Prompt size
563 chars
Research brief qualitySends to builder
Example survey structure
Van Westendorp price-sensitivity survey
Prompt exampleEditable in builder
Do you help choose project-management software?
Multiple choiceFirst question
2
At what monthly price per team would this seem too cheap?
Number
3
At what price would it seem like a bargain?
Number
4
At what price would it feel expensive but still worth considering?
Number
5
At what price would it be too expensive?
Number
Suggested analysis tags
Suggested
Target segment
Price-sensitive
High willingness
State the billing unit beside every amount. A respondent may answer very differently for $30 per user each month than for $30 per team each month.
Step 1
Define
one offer, audience, currency, and billing unit
Step 2
Measure
price perception, purchase intent, and value drivers
Step 3
Segment
compare qualified groups without mixing contexts
Step 4
Decide
use patterns as one input to pricing work
Better pricing evidence
Ask about a price in a context respondents can understand.
A useful price survey defines the offer, verifies respondent relevance, uses a suitable method, and preserves context. That structure helps separate a reaction to the number from a reaction to the product concept.
Screen for relevant experience
Start with category use, purchase responsibility, geography, or buying timeframe. Route people who cannot evaluate the offer away from pricing questions. Relevant answers are more useful than a larger collection of uninformed guesses.
Match the method to the decision
Use price-sensitivity questions for perceived boundaries, randomized price cells for purchase intent, or package choice for tradeoffs. Explain whether you are exploring a range, comparing offers, or examining a change.
Keep test conditions comparable
Keep the concept, currency, tax treatment, billing period, and quantity consistent. Use separate or randomized price versions so one number does not anchor later responses.
Choose a research design
Four price survey patterns for different questions.
There is no universal willingness-to-pay question. Choose the pattern that resembles the decision in front of you, then keep claims, visuals, and product details stable while respondents evaluate the price. Each pattern produces a different kind of evidence and should be interpreted in that context.
Price sensitivity meter
Ask four thresholds: too cheap, a bargain, expensive but worth considering, and too expensive. Use numeric fields with an explicit currency and billing unit, then review unusual entries before charting.
Randomized price test
Show each respondent one price for the same offer and use an identical purchase-likelihood scale. Plan enough qualified responses per cell before adding many prices or segments.
Package and feature choice
Present clearly specified packages, then ask about feature importance, missing value, budget, and reasons for the choice. Rotate order, and keep billing units comparable.
Current-customer value review
Connect price reactions to usage, outcomes, renewal intention, alternatives, and current plan. Label hypothetical changes as research, and segment customers by plan and use case.
Survey workflow
Build a price survey that supports a real decision.
Start with the business question and work backward. The price list is only one ingredient; audience quality, neutral stimulus, question order, and segmentation determine whether the responses can guide the next round of pricing research.
Name what you need to decide: an exploratory range, a launch price, package boundaries, or the response to a possible change. Define who can answer credibly, including purchase role, category experience, market, and timeframe. Put those facts in the prompt so the generated screening logic reflects the research population rather than a generic public poll.
02
Generate one coherent method
Ask for the measurement pattern that matches the decision. Include the offer description, currency, price unit, test points, and segments you expect to compare. If you are unsure, describe the decision instead of mixing every pricing technique into one survey. A focused survey is easier for respondents to finish and easier for your team to analyze.
03
Edit wording, order, and routing
Remove leading language, double questions, and unnecessary fields. Put qualification before the stimulus, keep price questions together, and place sensitive company or demographic questions near the end. Preview every conditional path, including disqualification, randomized cells, other-answer fields, and mobile layouts. Confirm that the same offer appears in every comparable branch.
04
Pilot, share, and inspect responses
Run a small pilot with people similar to the target audience. Look for confusion about the billing unit, unrealistic numeric formats, repeated submissions, and branches nobody reaches. After launch, export or route responses for cleaning and analysis. Compare distributions and segment patterns, while treating stated intent as evidence to combine with behavior, costs, competition, and follow-up research.
Question design
Choose the format that fits the pricing question.
Different formats answer different questions. Use the simplest approach that isolates the decision you care about, and avoid treating a single survey result as an automatic price recommendation.
Approach
What it measures
Watch for
ApproachDirect open-ended willingness to pay
What it measuresThe amount a respondent states without seeing preset choices.
Watch forHigh mental effort, currency mistakes, protest answers, and weak realism when the offer is unfamiliar.
Approach
Four price-perception thresholds
What it measuresWhere respondents describe an offer as too cheap, good value, getting expensive, or too expensive.
Watch forThreshold order, inconsistent entries, ambiguous billing units, and overclaiming that chart intersections reveal one correct price.
ApproachSingle-price purchase intent
What it measuresHow stated likelihood changes across separately assigned price cells for the same offer.
Watch forUneven samples, too many cells, exposure to other prices, and reading hypothetical intent as guaranteed buying behavior.
ApproachPackage selection
What it measuresWhich combination of features, service, and price a respondent prefers among defined alternatives.
Watch forOverloaded packages, order effects, incomparable units, and not asking why a package won or lost.
Field guide
Six parts every useful price survey needs.
These sections keep the respondent's frame of reference visible in the data. Generate all six, then trim any field that will not change recruitment, routing, segmentation, or a pricing decision.
1. Qualification
Confirm who can judge the offer.
Use observable eligibility questions: category purchase, usage recency, decision role, geography, company type, and buying timeframe. Route people outside the target to an early exit, using criteria aligned with the research brief.
Ask category behavior before revealing the study's preferred answer.
Separate users, buyers, approvers, and budget owners when those roles differ.
Record the disqualification reason so recruitment problems are visible.
2. Offer stimulus
Give everyone the same thing to evaluate.
Describe the customer, problem, deliverables, features, quantity, service level, and channel in neutral language. Keep visuals consistent across cells, and state whether tax, delivery, setup, or support is included.
Use plain product language rather than ad copy or internal jargon.
Show the billing period and unit beside every amount.
Change only the intended test variable across comparable branches.
3. Price measure
Collect an answer you can clean and compare.
Use numeric inputs with a visible currency for open prices and the same balanced scale for intent scenarios. Make ranges non-overlapping, include unsure when appropriate, and do not prefill an anchoring value.
Keep too cheap, bargain, expensive, and too expensive as separate questions.
Use identical likelihood wording across randomized price cells.
Plan how blanks, zeros, extreme values, and inconsistent thresholds will be reviewed.
4. Value drivers
Learn what sits behind the number.
Connect price answers to valued outcomes and tradeoffs. Ask about essential benefits, concerns that reduce value, and the main reason for purchase intent. Keep choice lists manageable and offer an optional comment.
Separate must-have features from features that are merely attractive.
Ask about alternatives, including doing nothing or using a manual workaround.
Place one focused explanation question after the key price rating.
5. Segmentation
Preserve the context for subgroup analysis.
Collect attributes tied to planned comparisons: usage, current spend, customer status, business size, role, urgency, or channel. Put classification after pricing and use consistent categories your sample can support.
Distinguish current customers from prospects and former customers.
Capture present solution and category spend using explicit time periods.
Avoid slicing small samples into more groups than the data can explain.
6. Quality checks
Make questionable responses discoverable.
Preview every path and retain review signals such as completion time, duplicate indicators, contradictory thresholds, or nonsense text. Inspect flags, document exclusions, and test whether borderline responses affect conclusions.
Pilot the survey to catch confusing units and unreachable branches.
Check that price thresholds follow a plausible order for each respondent.
Keep a repeatable cleaning log instead of deleting inconvenient answers informally.
Related tools
Build the rest of your market research workflow.
Use a broader research survey to map the market, a product or customer survey to understand experience, and focused polls or feedback forms for follow-up questions. Each link below is a separate live Makeform tool.
Practical answers for product teams, researchers, founders, and service businesses planning willingness-to-pay research.
What is a price survey?
A price survey is a questionnaire about how a defined audience perceives an offer's price, value, affordability, or purchase appeal. It can collect price thresholds, test purchase intent at one assigned price, compare packages, or examine current-customer value. Define the offer and billing unit, screen respondents, and retain segment context. Results are evidence, not an automatic price decision.
Which questions should I include in a price survey?
Include qualification, a neutral offer description, one pricing method, reasons behind the key rating, value drivers, alternatives or current spend, purchase timeframe, and useful segmentation fields. For price sensitivity, ask the four thresholds separately. For a randomized test, show one price per respondent and use the same purchase-likelihood scale. Add a method only when it serves a planned analysis.
How do I ask willingness to pay without leading respondents?
Use a factual concept description and state currency, quantity, and billing period. Do not mention your target, label a price as discounted, prefill numeric answers, or ask respondents to agree that the offer is affordable. For preset amounts, use separate price cells or a methodical sequence. Ask for reasons after the rating and put classification fields later.
What is the Van Westendorp price sensitivity meter?
This approach asks four perceived thresholds: too cheap, a bargain, expensive but still worth considering, and too expensive. Respondents enter an amount for each. Researchers clean answers and review distributions and intersections by relevant segment. The method explores boundaries for a defined offer; it does not by itself account for costs, competitors, actual conversion, or every packaging choice.
Should respondents see every price I want to test?
Not always. To compare intent at discrete points, show each respondent one randomly assigned price for the same offer and use the same scale. Package research may require multiple visible alternatives, making package design and display order important. Choose the design before fielding and recruit enough qualified respondents for the planned cells and segments.
How should I analyze price survey responses?
Review eligibility, duplicates, missing data, numeric formats, contradictory thresholds, and open-text quality with documented rules. Summarize distributions, not only averages, and compare predefined segments. For randomized cells, compare the same intent measure and inspect sample balance. Read comments for objections and value drivers. Combine stated answers with purchasing behavior, competition, unit economics, and further research.
Is the price survey generator free?
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and collect price survey responses without a form or response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge. Revise the wording, price points, choices, routing, and design before sharing.
Can I use one price survey for customers and noncustomers?
Yes, but identify groups early and give each relevant context. Customers can answer about usage, value for money, renewal, and hypothetical changes; prospects can evaluate the concept, alternatives, and purchase intent. Route group-specific sections, keep comparable wording consistent, and retain customer status. Use separate surveys when the audiences need different stimuli or pricing methods.
Turn a pricing question into a research-ready survey.
Generate a price survey built around your offer, audience, and decision.
Unlimited free forms and responsesEditable price points and routingFour complete research prompt examples
