Sample · Price threshold study

Apple AirPods 4 in Italy: price threshold study

Study February 2026 · LIMEN · limen-method.ch

1Summary

Question: Up to what price does an Italian adult choose Apple AirPods 4?

Among these respondents, choices turn at two prices, not one. Apple’s retail price of €149 sits at the threshold of the group that pays more.

2Share who chose to buy at each price

For each price, you get the share of respondents who chose to buy.

This sample has two groups (§4), so the report gives the shares for each group. The shares of the whole sample would sit between them and describe neither.

People who bought at every price, or at none: none in this sample, after the exclusions in §5.

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.

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. The unit cost of €60 is an assumption, not Apple’s figure; in a client study, you give us your unit cost.

3The threshold

Buyers decide at many prices; where their choices turn is the threshold.

• Group that pays more: €149, from a model of the choices and response times together. From the choices alone: about €152.
• Other group: near €101, from the choices. Their choices drop so sharply between €99 and €119 that the model of choices and response times gives no single point.

The threshold describes where these respondents’ choices turn. It is not a forecast of sales and not the price to set. This study did not compute an interval around each threshold.

4Segments

Segment detection is an additional service, agreed before the study (the variable and the N per group, in the study design).

In this method study, the two groups were found after the data, from the choices only. The split is descriptive.

5Method note

• Respondents: 58 recruited, 52 usable. Prolific panel, Italy, 8 February 2026, desktop computers only.
• Task: buy or not buy, one price at a time. Part 1: ten prices from €79 to €249, eight times each, in random order. Part 2: more decisions at prices near each person’s own threshold. Median duration 11 minutes.
• Exclusions by cause (rules written in the study protocol before the field): 5 people gave the same answer at more than 90% of prices; 1 person bought more often at higher prices. In LIMEN’s current studies, people who bought at every price, or at none, stay in the curve.
• Decisions removed: faster than 0.25 s, slower than 3 s, or far from the person’s usual speed (8.3% of decisions).
• Response times: Every decision gives LIMEN two signals: the choice and the response time. We compare the two and tell you where the threshold is. In this study, the threshold of the group that pays more comes from a model of choices and response times together; response times also removed decisions that were too fast or too slow.
• Level: the decisions are hypothetical, so the threshold level may sit above what buyers would pay for real.
• What this report does not claim: a market forecast; that respondents would buy for real at these prices; that the split into two groups is validated.
• Data fingerprint (SHA-256 of the analysed data file; it shows the data did not change after the report): 7519f37f7e3ff0ee3744e24a9d1ab0c67d6ce8ef5337d9ff2084768177732f2e