> He never asked if I’d give him money today for it. He got feedback from someone he didn’t know would be a paying customer or not.
That's because verbal pricing feedback from random people tends to be terribly inaccurate. Most people actually have a pretty poor conscious idea of what they will buy and how much they would pay for a future product.
Many times I've seen people in focus groups say they would pay $hundreds for an electronics product, then reveal that (for instance) they just had to sell their stereo on Craigslist for rent money. (Translation: no way in hell they would actually pay $hundreds for the product.)
This sort of guerilla action is great for usability testing of a mass-market product because the utility of the feedback increases with the ignorance of the test subject. If your product can be understood and used by tech luddites, it will work fine for tech savvies too.
But pricing research needs much more rigorous look at valid data on potential markets and customers.
That's because verbal pricing feedback from random people tends to be terribly inaccurate. Most people actually have a pretty poor conscious idea of what they will buy and how much they would pay for a future product.
Many times I've seen people in focus groups say they would pay $hundreds for an electronics product, then reveal that (for instance) they just had to sell their stereo on Craigslist for rent money. (Translation: no way in hell they would actually pay $hundreds for the product.)
This sort of guerilla action is great for usability testing of a mass-market product because the utility of the feedback increases with the ignorance of the test subject. If your product can be understood and used by tech luddites, it will work fine for tech savvies too.
But pricing research needs much more rigorous look at valid data on potential markets and customers.