“What would you expect to pay for something like this?”
From Madhavan Ramanujam · Partner at Simon-Kucher; author of Monetizing Innovation
Why it works
Ramanujam's research found most new products fail commercially not because they're bad but because companies design first and price last — they build, launch, then discover nobody will pay enough. His fix is to have the 'willingness to pay' talk with customers early in the product development process, so you know whether you're building something customers will pay for. Asking what someone would expect to pay surfaces their reference point — what they're anchoring against, what they think this is in the same class as — long before you've committed to features or a number. The expected price is rarely the price you'll charge, but the gap between it and your cost is the signal: if people expect to pay far less than it costs you to deliver, you've learned that for the price of a question instead of a launch.
When to ask
As early as you can stand to ask it — during discovery, while the idea is still cheap to change. The whole point is to learn the price before you've sunk cost into the product, not after.
Good follow-ups
- What are you comparing that price to — what's in the same bucket in your head?
- What would have to be true for it to be worth twice that?
- What's the most you've actually paid for something that solved this?
Watch out for
Treating the stated number as your price. Expected price is an anchor, not a willingness-to-pay ceiling — people routinely pay more than they 'expect' once the value is clear, and routinely refuse a price they named when the value never lands. The deeper trap is asking after you've built: by then the question can't change the product, which was the entire reason to ask. And a number with no reasoning is noise — always follow with what they're comparing it to.
Where to ask
- In-product surveygreat
A clean fit on a pricing-research survey — one open price expectation per respondent, asked of people who understand what the thing does.
- User interviewworkable
Strong live as the opener to a willingness-to-pay conversation — you can probe the number behind the number — but a single answer is a data point, not a price.
- Long-form surveyworkable
Works in an emailed study; pair it with the reasoning follow-up, because an expected price with no explanation is hard to act on.
Pairs well with
Stage: Consider · A question popularized by Madhavan Ramanujam
Source: https://www.marketingjournal.org/monetizinginnovation/