How much farmers will pay for tire innovation
A leading US tire manufacturer wanted to know how much crop farmers would be willing to pay for new innovative tires.
The Challenge
Farmers in the field
The tire manufacturer wanted a pricing study to compare the costs of four competitive brands across three different types of farm equipment. This included how equipment type, tire position, and brand impacts willingness to pay. However, reaching crop farmers who are out in the fields from dawn ‘til dusk is not an easy task. The hard-to-reach audience, as well as the price differences across the number of brands and products involved, required custom recruitment and a strong comprehension of tires and the agricultural industry.
Our Approach
Simplifying the complex
Werk Insight, a B2B market research agency, interviewed 400 crop farmers using a quantitative study. The study design identified what types of tires farmers were buying, which brands they preferred, and how much they were willing to pay.
Starting with a virtual immersive meeting with the client, we identified all the possible factors that farmers consider when buying new tires. This insight, as well as existing pricing data, gave us a realistic range of prices to present to the farmers.
Farmers rarely sit at a desk, which makes online surveys at scale impossible. We custom-recruited 400 crop farmers from industry publications and via the phone for live interviews at any time convenient to them. Recognizing the commercial opportunity and the greater frequency of buying tires, we over-sampled from large farms.
By applying a Van Westerndorp Price Sensitivity Meter to the data identified the optimal price range for agricultural tires and how different prices affect demand (i.e., price sensitivity). It told us how much crop farmers would be willing to pay for each of the four competitor brands, across different types of agricultural equipment as well as tire positions.
The Insight
Prices that farmers will pay
Our final report told the tire manufacturer the most important factors to crop farmers when buying agricultural tires, and how much they would pay. That gave the manufacturer clarity on how to price different tires, while still being competitive in the market.