In the traditional VW approach, respondents are presented with the description of a product or service and they asked four basic questions:
- At what price would you begin to think product is getting expensive, but you still might consider it? (expensive price point).
- At what price would you begin to think product is too expensive to consider / buy? (too expensive price point).
- At what price would you think product is cheap / a bargain – a great buy for the money? (cheap price point).
- At what price would you begin to think product is so inexpensive / priced so cheaply that you would worry about its quality / question the quality and not consider it? (too cheap price point).
Notes:
- Usually, prices are collected through open-ended questions (unaided) or through a long (40 to 60 points) list of equally spaced price points (eg: 10.00, 10.50, 11.00, 11.50, etc).
- The stated prices at the four VW questions must be strictly monotonic, i.e. too cheap price < cheap price < expensive price < too expensive price for any respondent.
- The too cheap price question might be omitted from a questionnaire. In fact, some products might not have a price below which it is so cheap that one would question its quality.