Market research survey questions for sizing, pricing and positioning

Choose market research survey questions by the decision they inform. Sizing questions should count things respondents know: how often they buy, how much they spend and how they handle the problem today. Pricing questions should separate what people pay now from how they react to your price. Positioning questions should find out what people compare you with and which words they use for the problem. For every question, decide in advance how you will check the answer, whether against records, against another question or in a follow-up conversation.

This page is a question bank organized by goal. For planning, sampling and fielding the survey itself, see market research survey.

A worked example

Suppose you are considering software that helps mid-size general contractors track rented equipment such as lifts, generators and excavators. You have heard that rental bills often include days when equipment sat idle on a site. You plan to survey project managers and finance staff at contractors. This example is hypothetical and is used throughout the page.

Market sizing questions

A survey cannot tell you how many contractors exist. Count those from public data first (market size research shows how), and use the survey to estimate the rates you cannot find anywhere else: what share rents equipment, how often, and how many have the problem.

• Qualifier: "Does your company rent heavy equipment for its projects?" Yes / No / Don't know
• Frequency: "In the last 12 months, about how many separate equipment rentals did your company have?" Ranges such as 1–10, 11–50, 51–200, more than 200, don't know
• Spend: "Roughly how much did your company spend on equipment rentals in the last 12 months?" Ranges, plus "Don't know"
• Current process: "How does your company currently keep track of which rented equipment is on which site?" A list built from interviews, plus "Other (please specify)"
• Problem incidence: "In the last three months, did your company pay for rental days when the equipment was not being used?" Yes / No / Don't know

How to check these answers:

• Route questions to the person who knows. If most project managers answer "don't know" on spend, ask finance staff instead, or drop the question.
• Look for answers that contradict each other. A respondent who reports five rentals and a very large annual rental bill may have misread a question, or may work for a much bigger company than you screened for.
• Keep ranges honest. AAPOR recommends answer options that do not overlap and cover every reasonable answer, including "don't know" where people may need it.

Pricing questions

Start with what people pay today for the problem or its workaround: "What does your company currently pay for tracking rented equipment, including any staff time or software?" That anchors the conversation in real spend rather than a hypothetical.

If the product is new enough that nobody knows what it should cost, the Van Westendorp price sensitivity meter is a common starting point. Sawtooth Software's guide lists its four questions:

1. At what price would you consider the product so inexpensive that you would feel the quality couldn't be very good?
2. At what price would you consider it a bargain?
3. At what price would you say it is starting to get expensive, but you still might consider it?
4. At what price would you consider it so expensive that you would not consider buying it?

Sawtooth is candid about the limits. It says the method suits products that are new to the world, while monadic price tests and conjoint analysis are usually better for established products. It notes the questions lack competitive context and that the traditional line-crossing analysis has been criticized as lacking good theory.

Purchase intent questions need the same caution. Sawtooth notes that respondents typically exaggerate purchase intent, so researchers discount the answers, and it gives one possible set of discounts: count 75% of "definitely would buy," 25% of "probably would buy" and 10% of "might or might not buy." In a hypothetical survey of 200 contractors where 30 say definitely, 60 say probably and 50 say might or might not, the arithmetic is:

• 0.75 × 30 = 22.5
• 0.25 × 60 = 15
• 0.10 × 50 = 5
• Total: 42.5 likely buyers, or about 21% of 200

The raw "definitely or probably" figure would have been 90 of 200, or 45%. The discount factors are one example from Sawtooth, not a rule, but the gap shows why a survey "yes" should not go straight into a revenue model. Researching willingness to pay covers ways to test price through real actions.

Positioning questions

Positioning questions ask what you are being compared with and what matters in that comparison.

• Current alternative, open-ended first: "The last time rented equipment sat idle on one of your sites, what did you do about it?" Open text
• Tools considered: "Which tools or services, if any, has your company used or considered for tracking rented equipment?" Ask this as open text before showing any list of names.
• What matters most: Show two criteria at a time, such as "fewer idle rental days" versus "less time spent reconciling invoices," and ask which matters more. Rating every criterion on its own tends to make everything look important.
• Problem framing: Show two or three short descriptions of the problem in random order and ask, "Which of these best describes a problem your company has?"
• Their words: "How would you describe this problem to a colleague?" Open text

Order matters here. Pew Research Center found that when closed-ended questions on a topic come before an open-ended one, people are much more likely to mention ideas raised in the earlier questions. Ask the open questions first. Pew also notes that people completing surveys on their own tend to pick options near the top of a list, which is why it randomizes the order of options that have no natural sequence.

The answer list itself shapes the result. In a Pew experiment, 58% chose the economy as their top issue when it was offered in a list, but only 35% named it when asked the same question without a list, and 43% of the open-ended answers were not on the closed list at all. For positioning, that means a list of competitors you wrote yourself will miss what buyers actually use, which is often a spreadsheet, a rental company's own portal or nothing at all. Competitor analysis covers how to research those alternatives.

Check the answers before you act

• Pretest the questionnaire. AAPOR recommends cognitive interviews with people similar to your respondents, in which they explain how they understood each question and arrived at an answer. Three or four contractors will find the questions that read differently than you intended.
• Say where the sample came from. A survey sent to a trade association list or an online panel describes those respondents. AAPOR notes that nonprobability samples need special care in analysis and reporting.
• Compare only groups big enough to compare. If you want to split results by company size, each group needs enough responses on its own. Quantitative market research covers sample planning.
• Call the surprising respondents. Pick five to eight people whose answers you did not expect and ask about a recent specific event. If the survey says idle rental days are common but nobody on the phone can name a recent one, trust the calls and revisit the question wording.

Your next step

Write down the decision your survey supports, then choose two or three questions from the relevant section above. Build answer lists from a few interviews before you draft closed options.

If you need to reach people who are not on your own list, such as controllers or equipment managers at contractors, Instant Expert can find people who match a description you write. You review who it finds, it sends your invitations, and you pay only for calls that get booked. The directory page for finance professionals in construction is one place to start.