Case study · Consumer electronics · Italy

AirPods 4: two markets behind one price

LIMEN method study · 52 Italian consumers online · February 2026

1The question

A price study usually ends with one number. One number assumes one market. If the buyers are in fact two groups, that number can describe nobody.

We tested this on a product anyone can look up: Apple AirPods 4, sold at €149.

2What we did

Each person saw AirPods 4 at one price at a time and chose: buy or not buy. Prices from €79 to €249 came back several times, in random order, and each answer had to come fast.

Every decision gives LIMEN two signals: the choice and the response time. We compare the two and tell you where the threshold is.

About ten minutes per respondent. 52 Italian consumers online, from the Prolific panel, after the exclusion rules of the study protocol.

3What we found

In our AirPods 4 study (52 Italian consumers online), the choices showed two groups of about equal size: one stopped buying near €149, Apple’s retail price; the other near €101.

One price from a survey can describe nobody: in our AirPods 4 study, an average between the two groups fits neither.

The two groups were found from choices only. They also named different prices when asked directly (Van Westendorp “expensive, but I would buy it”: about €105 against about €160, p < 0.001). This supports the split; it does not validate it.

4What it means for the price

With an assumed cost of €60, Apple’s €149 gives, in the group that pays more, about 72% of the maximum revenue and about 86% of the maximum profit.

Apple’s €149 is consistent with a choice for margin and position, not for maximum profit.

From these shares, we compute the price that maximizes revenue; with your unit cost, the price that maximizes profit. Both are for the respondents who chose, not a market forecast.

5Limits

• The decisions are hypothetical, so the threshold level may sit above what buyers would pay for real.
• One country, one online panel, 52 people.
• The split is descriptive: it was found after the data. In a client study, segment detection is an additional service, agreed before the study (the variable and the N per group, in the study design).
• The direct price question came after the decision task, so the two measures are not fully separate.
• The cost of €60 is an assumption, not Apple’s figure.

6Read further

• Sample report — what a client receives, built on this study.
• Working note: Two Markets in One — the method in detail.
• Try the task — the decisions a respondent makes.