Do consumers' stated purchase intentions in surveys reliably predict their actual spending behavior?

Peter Rahal · Aug 8, 2025

Survey data on pricing is unreliable — mothers say they are willing to pay up for kids' products but their actual purchase behaviour shows they will not

Nobody wants to admit they won't spend on their kids, so stated intent diverges from behaviour; in reality they want a 49-cent bar, not a $1.50 one

Scope: specifically kids' products pricing

22:34 20VC: The $BN Greenoaks Backed Protein Bar | Hitting $100M Revenues in David's First Year: Lessons & Mistakes | $0 to $600M: The Untold RXBAR Story | Product-Market-Fit, Pricing, Branding: What Every Founder Gets Wrong Today with Peter Rahal

Harry Stebbings · Aug 8, 2025

Stated preferences and actual spending behaviour diverge sharply, sometimes in the opposite direction from what survey data suggests

A pet insurance company's data showed ~91% say they wouldn't spend on their pet, yet when it comes to it they absolutely would

23:32 20VC: The $BN Greenoaks Backed Protein Bar | Hitting $100M Revenues in David's First Year: Lessons & Mistakes | $0 to $600M: The Untold RXBAR Story | Product-Market-Fit, Pricing, Branding: What Every Founder Gets Wrong Today with Peter Rahal

Tony Fadell · May 11, 2022

You cannot simply trust what customers say they want, because research framing forces trade-offs on them that they never face in the store

In an interview you give them the full list of downsides, effectively pre-reviewing the product; in a store they only get a gut reaction to the nicer-looking option and will pay more for it despite worse specs

8:58 Stated preferences in research settings are unreliable due to artificial trade off framing

Harry Stebbings · Dec 7, 2022

When founders report that customers said they would buy but then didn't, the fault usually lies in how the question was asked

21:59 Poor question framing explains why stated buy intent doesnt materialize