"Value is what people are willing to pay for it"
About this Quote
The intent is ruthlessly practical. “Value” here isn’t craftsmanship, usefulness, or virtue; it’s an outcome of collective desire under constraint. That shift matters because it relocates power from the maker to the buyer, from the spreadsheet to the crowd. The subtext: if you can’t get paid, your story about quality is just that - a story. It’s also a quiet defense of pricing strategies that feel opportunistic. Luxury goods, hot concert tickets, startup valuations, even “personal brands” online all lean on the same premise: scarcity plus appetite equals value, whether or not the underlying thing changed at all.
Yet the quote also smuggles in a worldview. It treats willingness to pay as a neutral signal, not a distorted one. In real life, willingness is shaped by income, access, hype cycles, information gaps, and monopoly power. A lifesaving drug can be “valued” low by people who simply can’t afford it; a speculative asset can be “valued” high by people chasing status or fear of missing out. Naisbitt’s sentence works because it’s blunt enough to guide decisions, and slippery enough to excuse them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marketing |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Business Exit Planning (Les Nemethy, 2011) modern compilationISBN: 9781118022979 · ID: t3ziYWukiPwC
Evidence:
... Value is what people are willing to pay for it . -John Naisbitt ( b . 1929 ) American author and public speaker T ' his chapter is not designed to make you an expert in building business plans or performing a valuation . It is rather ... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Naisbitt, John. (2026, February 14). Value is what people are willing to pay for it. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/value-is-what-people-are-willing-to-pay-for-it-94126/
Chicago Style
Naisbitt, John. "Value is what people are willing to pay for it." FixQuotes. February 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/value-is-what-people-are-willing-to-pay-for-it-94126/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Value is what people are willing to pay for it." FixQuotes, 14 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/value-is-what-people-are-willing-to-pay-for-it-94126/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.




