Finding the right price is a research problem

Pricing usually gets handled as an expensive math exercise or a long, tedious series of meetings. And even standard pricing research doesn't give you the complete picture.

A traditional pricing test gives you a number. It shows where revenue peaks and how many buyers you lose at each price. It doesn't show why buyers felt a price was worth it, or not.

Price comes down to what buyers are willing to pay, and they have reasons for that limit. When you understand the reason buyers are willing to pay a certain price, you also learn what would need to change to get buyers to pay more. That's why we've built Gabor-Granger pricing tests in Listen Labs.

You get the same price ladder and demand curve as traditional Gabor-Granger tests, plus an AI interviewer that asks every buyer why they said yes or no.

How the price ladder works

Each buyer reads a description of your product. Then we ask how likely they would be to buy it at a set price.

Would you buy this at $50? No. $40? Maybe. $30? Yes.

Every yes raises the floor, and every no lowers the ceiling, until we find the most that each buyer is willing to pay.

Across all the buyers in your study, those limits build a demand curve. It shows how many buyers you keep at each price and where revenue peaks. You can segment by the audiences that matter most and see each group on its own, without fielding a new study.

A demand curve, and the story behind it

A standard price test stops at the curve. In Listen, every point on the curve comes with the buyer's reasons.

Buyers explain their decisions in their own words, so you learn how they think about price. The AI interviewer asks follow-up questions about each buyer's choices, especially the prices they said yes to and the ones they turned down.

Then it keeps digging to find out whether the decision came down to money or value. "I can't afford it" and "it's not worth that much to me" sit at the same spot on a demand curve. One means the price is more than people have to spend. The other means they don't see enough value at that price. These two problems have different fixes, and now you know which one you're dealing with.

The same is true when demand starts to soften. A curve treats every answer as a buy or a walk-away. Real buying rarely breaks that cleanly. You hear whether a higher price means someone leaves or just buys two instead of four, and whether a lower price would get them to buy more. For anything people buy again and again, that difference can change your strategy.

Listen then codes the answers into themes and measures them. So when a quarter of buyers give the same reason for turning down $45, you see it right away. Reasoning that used to be anecdotal becomes something you can measure and report.

Turn a pricing test into a pricing strategy

Once you know why a price was too high or too low, you know what to charge and what to change to raise what buyers are willing to pay.

Buyers tell you what would make a higher price worth it, from better ingredients to a new feature. You can hand that research to your R&D team to help prioritize their roadmap.

Marketing gets insights from the same study. A 30-pack of vitamins tested well at $29 because buyers thought a dollar a day was reasonable. That line can go straight into a campaign.

One study can now shape your price, what you build next, and how you go to market.

Every number traces back to a real interview

Click any point on the curve to see the interviews behind the number: the quote and the audio or video clip.

When someone pushes back in the stakeholder presentation, skip the methodology walkthrough. Play the clip of a buyer explaining their choice in their own words.

The math holds up underneath it. People who wouldn't buy at any price stay in the count, so demand isn't inflated. Buyers who say yes to a high price and no to a lower one get counted separately. Half-finished ladders are removed. Once answers start coming in, the prices lock, so every buyer sees the same prices.

Software, plus a team of career researchers

Listen Labs is an end-to-end research company. Recruiting, moderation, and analysis live in one place. A pricing question that used to mean a separate vendor and a separate budget is now one question type inside the studies you're already running.

For complex projects, our insights team offers white-glove support. They're career researchers with decades of experience running studies for the largest companies in the world. Partner with them to find the right price for your product and understand the why behind it.

Gabor-Granger is live in Listen Labs today. Book a demo to learn more.

Don't guess. Just listen.