Hypothetical Bias

The systematic tendency for survey respondents to overstate what they would pay for a product when no real purchase is required. The gap between what people say they'll pay and what they actually pay when real money is on the table. Peer-reviewed pricing-research findings have measured this directly: hypothetical methods produce WTP estimates roughly twice as high as those from incentive-aligned methods where respondents must back stated prices with real money. Respondents in a survey face no consequences for overstating — the cognitive cost of saying "$100" instead of "$60" is zero. The number they give you isn't what they'd pay; it's what they can imagine paying in a low-stakes thought experiment. The B2B software gap is amplified by salesperson willingness to discount — buyers approach negotiations expecting discounting, procurement teams come prepared with other customers' net prices and discount terms, and reps trade margin for closeable deals, so the realized price routinely lands below the survey ceiling regardless of what stated WTP measured. SPP does not use survey-based WTP to set prices. We measure real demand through transaction data — what buyers actually do, not what they say they'd do.