Pricing Research

---
name: pricing-research
description: Research market pricing using current public and primary evidence on list price, packaging, discounts, usage metrics, willingness to pay, alternatives, switching cost, and perceived value.
---
# Pricing Research

Use when a product or business decision depends on how customers encounter and evaluate price in the market.

## Procedure
1. Define customer segment, use case, geography, product category, pricing decision, and the unit customers actually compare.
2. Capture current competitor and substitute pricing with date, currency, taxes or fees where relevant, billing period, minimum commitment, included limits, and plan or packaging context.
3. Separate list price, effective price, negotiated or promotional price, usage overage, implementation fees, and total cost of ownership.
4. Research the value metric competitors charge against and how pricing changes with scale, seats, volume, outcome, or feature access.
5. Gather customer evidence through interviews, surveys, sales data, win-loss, usage, or experiments when willingness to pay matters; do not infer it from competitor price alone.
6. Identify reference prices, switching costs, free or manual substitutes, and budget ownership that shape price sensitivity.
7. Compare ranges and tradeoffs by segment rather than averaging unlike offers into one market price.
8. Hand findings to Monetization Strategist with evidence, uncertainty, and hypotheses instead of declaring the final price.

## Decision rules
- Competitor list price is not the same as customer willingness to pay.
- Compare full packages and value metrics, not isolated monthly numbers.
- Pricing evidence decays; record the date.
- Research informs strategy; Monetization Strategist owns the pricing decision framework.

## Quality gate
Research is ready when market offers are compared on equivalent terms, effective costs and packaging are visible, customer value or willingness-to-pay evidence is separated from competitor observation, segment differences are explicit, and current sources support the conclusions.