Market Research Survey Questions: 50+ Examples Organized by Research Goal
Most market research surveys fail before a single response comes in — not because the sample is too small or the platform too expensive, but because the questions are wrong. They're too vague to act on ("How do you feel about our brand?"), leading enough to skew the data, or built for a different research goal than the one you actually have. A satisfaction question won't tell you what to charge. A pricing question won't tell you why people churned.
This guide gives you 50+ questions organized by what you're trying to learn. Find the section that matches your research goal, pull the questions, and adapt them from there.
Brand Awareness Questions
Brand awareness questions only work in a specific order, and getting the order wrong invalidates the data. You measure unaided awareness first — the moment you show your brand name, you've contaminated every question that follows, because the respondent can no longer tell you what they'd recall on their own. Move from unprompted recall to prompted recognition to perception to intent.
The gap between your unaided and aided numbers is the most useful output here. High aided recognition with low unaided recall means people know you exist but don't think of you first — a top-of-mind problem, not a reach problem. Closing that gap is a different marketing job than building recognition from zero, so measuring both is what tells you which one you have.
Start with unaided awareness, which measures whether your brand surfaces without prompting:
"When you think of [category], which brands come to mind first?"
"Which [category] brands can you name off the top of your head?"
Then aided awareness, which measures recognition once you supply the name:
"Have you heard of [Brand] before today?"
"Which of the following brands are you familiar with?" (present a list including competitors)
Then brand perception, which captures what the brand actually means to people:
"How would you describe [Brand] in three words?"
"What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear [Brand]?"
"How would you rate [Brand] on trustworthiness, from 1 to 7?"
Then purchase intent, which connects awareness to behavior:
"How likely are you to consider [Brand] the next time you buy [category]?"
"How likely are you to purchase from [Brand] in the next 3 months?"
"Compared to other [category] brands you're aware of, where does [Brand] rank for you?"
Running a brand awareness study? SegmentOS's Brand Awareness Study template includes a pre-validated sequence of these questions with built-in benchmarking.
Product & Concept Testing Questions
Concept testing measures reaction to something that doesn't exist yet — an idea, a prototype, a positioning statement. The goal is to find the dealbreakers and the must-haves before you build. One common mistake: people put purchase intent and willingness-to-pay questions in their brand survey. They belong here. Intent only means something when it's attached to a specific concept and a specific price, not a brand in the abstract.
Open with initial reaction, before you've explained anything:
"What was your first impression of this concept?"
"In one sentence, what do you think this product does?" (a clarity check — if they can't describe it, your positioning is broken)
"How appealing is this concept to you, from 1 to 7?"
Then feature prioritization, to separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves:
"Rank these features from most to least valuable to you." (or use a MaxDiff exercise for sharper trade-off data)
"If you could only have one of these features, which would it be?"
Plain ranking is faster to field but flattens differences — respondents will rank a feature second whether they care about it a little less or a lot less. MaxDiff forces explicit trade-offs between features and produces a scaled score, so it's worth the added complexity when the prioritization decision is expensive to get wrong, like deciding what to build first.
Then willingness to pay and competitive preference:
"At $X per month, how likely would you be to purchase this?"
"How does this concept compare to [the solution you use today]?"
Then deal-breaker identification, the question that saves you from building the wrong thing:
"Is there anything here that would stop you from buying?"
"What would need to change before you'd seriously consider this?"
Pay attention to deal-breakers even when the overall appeal score is high. A concept can test well on average and still have a single objection — a missing integration, a privacy concern, a workflow it doesn't fit — that quietly disqualifies a third of your market. The average hides it; the deal-breaker question surfaces it before you've spent the build budget.
For a structured version of this flow, SegmentOS offers a concept testing survey template built around the same sequence.
Pricing Research Questions
The backbone of pricing research is the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter — four questions that, taken together, map the range of prices the market considers acceptable. The power is in the combination: each question alone is noisy, but plotted together they reveal the price points where you start losing buyers on either end. Ask all four, and keep them in this order:
Too expensive: "At what price would this product be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?"
Too cheap: "At what price would this product be so cheap that you'd question its quality?"
Expensive but worth it: "At what price would this product start to feel expensive, but you'd still consider it worth the money?"
Bargain price: "At what price would this product be a bargain — a great buy for the money?"
Don't split these across the survey or reorder them. They're designed to be answered as a set, and the analysis depends on each respondent giving all four price points.
Here's what you do with the answers: plot the cumulative distributions of all four questions and look at where the lines cross. The point where "too cheap" and "too expensive" intersect is your optimal price point — the price that minimizes the share of people rejecting on either end. The "too cheap" and "expensive but worth it" lines bound the acceptable range. You're not getting a single magic number; you're getting a defensible window, which is exactly what you want when you have to set a real price.
Four supplementary questions add context the Van Westendorp sequence doesn't capture:
"At $X, how likely are you to purchase?" (purchase intent at a specific stated price)
"What do you currently pay for a comparable solution?" (competitor price perception)
"What would make this price feel justified to you?" (value framing)
"How much does price influence your decision when buying [category]?" (price sensitivity screener)
A complete pricing study template handles the Van Westendorp analysis for you and adds the supplementary questions in the right slots.
Customer Satisfaction Questions
Satisfaction questions are most useful as a recurring measurement, not a one-time snapshot. Ask the same questions on the same cadence — monthly, quarterly, after every renewal — and the value comes from the trend line, not any single score. A 7/10 means nothing in isolation; a 7 that was an 8 last quarter means something. The corollary: don't reword the questions between waves. The moment you change the wording, you've broken the comparison and the trend you spent months building resets to zero.
"Overall, how satisfied are you with [Company]?" (1–7 scale)
"How well does [Company] meet your needs?"
"How easy was it to [complete the core task]?"
"How much effort did you have to put in to get what you needed?" (effort score — high effort predicts churn better than satisfaction alone)
"On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend [Company] to a colleague?" (your single loyalty question)
"What's one thing we could do better?" (open-ended — this is where the actionable feedback lives)
"How would you rate your most recent experience with [support / onboarding / billing]?" (specific touchpoint rating)
"How does [Company] compare to what you expected when you signed up?"
For a recurring loyalty score survey you can run on a fixed cadence, SegmentOS has a template that tracks these over time.
UX & Product Feedback Questions
UX feedback has a short shelf life. Send these within 48 hours of the event you're measuring — a first session, a failed checkout, an onboarding flow — because the specific friction the respondent felt fades fast and gets replaced by a vague general impression. The closer to the moment, the more precise the answer. Ask someone a week later why they abandoned signup and you'll get "it was confusing"; ask them an hour after and you'll get "the verification email never arrived." Only one of those is something you can fix.
"How easy was it to [complete the task]?" (task completion ease)
"How easy was it to find what you were looking for?" (navigation clarity)
"Did you find everything you were looking for?" (feature discovery)
"What almost made you give up?" (friction identification — this surfaces the silent drop-off points)
"What's missing from the product?" (unmet needs)
"What was your impression the first time you used [product]?" (first-use impression)
"How likely are you to use [product] again?" (return intent)
"If you could change one thing about [product], what would it be?"
A timed UX feedback survey template makes it easier to trigger these right after the event you care about.
Customer Exit Questions
Exit surveys answer the most expensive question you have: why people leave. The critical design choice is forced choice over open text for the primary reason. You want quantifiable data — "31% left over price" — not 200 free-text responses you'll never code. Use multiple choice for the reason, and save open text for the follow-up.
"What's the main reason you're leaving?" (multiple choice: price, missing features, switched to a competitor, no longer need it, poor support, other)
"How satisfied were you with [Company] overall?" (satisfaction at exit)
"Are you switching to another solution? If so, which one?" (competitive switch)
"What would bring you back?" (win-back condition)
"How long were you a customer?" (tenure at exit — churn reasons differ sharply by tenure)
"On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend [Company] despite leaving?"
Tenure matters more than people expect: someone who churns in the first 30 days is telling you about onboarding and early value, while someone who leaves after two years is telling you about a ceiling they hit or a competitor that caught up. Cross-tabbing the exit reason by tenure separates those two stories, and they call for completely different fixes.
Open-ended reasons only work here if your churn volume is low enough to read every response by hand. At scale, force the choice on the primary reason or you'll have data you can't act on. SegmentOS's customer exit survey template is built around forced-choice reasons with open follow-ups.
Screening & Demographic Questions
Most survey builders ask about demographics first. It feels logical — you want to know who you're talking to. But it backfires: respondents who start with age, role, and company size questions drop off faster, and they answer the substantive questions that follow with those identities primed. Collect demographics last, after you've already captured the answers that matter.
"How often do you use [category/product]?" (category usage frequency)
"Which best describes your role?" (job function)
"How many employees work at your company?" (company size, for B2B)
"What is your age range?"
"When did you last purchase [category]?" (purchase recency)
"What's your role in [category] purchase decisions?" (decision-making authority)
The one exception: screener questions that qualify a respondent — confirming they actually use the category, or hold the role you're studying — go at the very start, before any substantive questions. You don't want to spend questions on people who shouldn't be in the sample. The distinction is purpose: screeners gate entry and come first; profiling demographics describe your sample and come last.
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How to Pick the Right Section
If you read this far hoping the structure would tell you where to start, here it is. Match your goal to the section, pull the questions, grab the matching template:
If you're trying to… | Use these questions | Template |
|---|---|---|
Understand brand awareness | Brand Awareness Questions | |
Validate a product idea | Concept Testing Questions | |
Set your price | Pricing Research Questions | |
Measure customer health | Satisfaction Questions | |
Fix product friction | UX Feedback Questions | |
Learn why customers churned | Exit Questions |
SegmentOS has pre-built templates for each of the study types above — question sequences validated for the specific research goal, with access to a 30M+ consumer panel to run them. Browse survey templates →
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How many questions should a market research survey have?
Aim for 8–15 questions, or 5–10 minutes to complete. Past that, drop-off and rushed answers degrade your data. Cut anything you won't act on. A tightly scoped survey built around one research goal beats a long one covering several goals poorly, which is why goal-based market research survey examples stay short.
What is the Van Westendorp pricing question sequence?
A four-question method for finding an acceptable price range: at what price is the product too expensive, too cheap, expensive but still worth it, and a bargain. Plotted together, the four answers reveal the price points where you start losing buyers on either end. Always ask all four in order.
Should demographic questions go at the start or end of a survey?
t the end. Front-loading age, role, and company size raises drop-off and primes respondents to answer later questions through those identities. Put profiling demographics last. The one exception is screener questions that qualify who enters the survey — those belong at the very start, before any substantive questions.
What's the difference between a screener and a demographic question?
Purpose and placement. Screeners qualify respondents — confirming they use the category or hold a role — and go first, so you don't waste questions on the wrong people. Demographic questions describe your sample after the fact and go last. The same field, like job role, can serve either purpose depending on where and why you ask it.
What questions should I ask in a market research survey?
Match questions to your goal. For brand work, ask unaided then aided awareness; for pricing, run the Van Westendorp sequence; for satisfaction, ask an overall rating plus a 0–10 recommend question. These market research survey questions examples each map to a specific decision, so pick the section that fits what you need to learn.
