Experimental Research
Experimental research in marketing involves conducting controlled experiments to test the impact of specific marketing strategies or interventions. It typically involves manipulating variables and measuring their effects on consumer behavior or market outcomes. By using experimental designs, marketers can gain insights into causality and make more informed decisions about their marketing efforts.
7 Key excerpts on "Experimental Research"
eBook - ePub- James P. Neelankavil(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...8 Experimental Research Experimentation is a type of conclusive research in which the objective is to understand cause-and-effect relationships between variables. L EARNING O BJECTIVES After reading this chapter, students should be able to • Understand causal research • Know what the conditions for causality are • Understand validity in experimental designs • Know the various experimental designs • Understand the application of designs for various research objectives • Be familiar with the use of experimental designs in test marketing • Understand the general benefits of using experimental designs • Know the problems associated with experimental designs International executives need to understand why certain decisions they make have a greater impact on business results than some others. Will sales always rise when prices are lowered? Will factory workers always increase output when offered incentive bonuses? Causal research can help with these types of decisions. By scientifically isolating variables that have a greater impact on an outcome, managers can improve their decision-making skills. Experiments are widely used in product testing, tradeoff analysis, and test marketing. 1 Most causal research techniques are able to isolate those variables that have an effect on another variable. Furthermore, they help in determining the nature of the relationship between the cause variable and the effect variable, and they help predict the effect. Most causal research designs are structured and require careful planning. The major causal research technique used in business settings is experimentation. With the advent of computers and the ability to customize them easily, many researchers are using this technology...
eBook - ePubThe Market Research Toolbox
A Concise Guide for Beginners
- Edward F. (Francis) McQuarrie(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Experiments predict what will happen if you provide X functionality and/or price this functionality at Y. Although strictly speaking, even experiments do not offer the kind of proof available in mathematics, experiments provide perhaps the most compelling kind of evidence available from any kind of market research, with field experiments being particularly strong on this count. In short, experiments represent the most straightforward application of the scientific method to marketing decisions. Experimentation has two subsidiary strengths. First, the structure of an experiment corresponds to one of the knottiest problems faced in business decision making: selecting the best from among several attractive alternatives. This is the kind of decision that, in the absence of experimental evidence, is particularly prone to politicking, to agonizing uncertainty, or to a despairing flip of the coin. In their place, experiments offer empirical evidence for distinguishing among good, better, and best. Second, experiments afford the opportunity to forecast sales, profit, and market share (again, this is most true of field experiments). The direct mail experiment described earlier provides a forecast or prediction of what the return rate, and hence the profitability, will be for the campaign itself. The pricing experiment similarly provides a prediction of what kind of market share and competitive penetration can be achieved at a specific price point, while the product design experiment provides the same kind of forecast for a particular configuration of functionality. These forecasts can be used to construct pro forma income statements for the advertising, pricing, or product decision. These in turn can be compared with corporate standards or expectations to make a go/no-go decision. This is an important advantage, inasmuch as even the best of the product designs tested may produce too little revenue or profit to be worthwhile...
eBook - ePub- Sunny Crouch, Matthew Housden(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...12 Using research in experiments 12.1 Introduction 12.2 Types of research experiment 12.3 Types of experimental design 12.4 Setting up research experiments 12.5 Summary 12.1 Introduction Experiments are used when some decision is under consideration and the results cannot be predicted from the existing experience either of the organization itself, or of the activity of other organizations within the marketplace. Experiments attempt to measure change under, as far as possible, normal marketplace conditions. The problem is that they are expensive and can disclose plans to competitors. It may also be difficult to achieve normal marketplace conditions on a sufficiently small scale for the exercise to be considered an experiment rather than a ‘suck-it-and-see’ trial. In addition, retailers are often unwilling to co-operate with a test in one area alone. Experiments should normally be confined to situations where the expense and effort involved are calculated to be more than compensated for by the outcome of the experiment. This should be estimated beforehand. It should also be determined that the information could not be gained any other way; for example, by monitoring similar approaches by other companies, comparison with other markets, or reanalysing existing data from past or syndicated surveys. Given that experiments are thought to be worthwhile, several approaches are possible. Two types of market experiment can be used before new product launching: experimental launching or pilot launching. For existing products, market tests may be either specific or exploratory. If an experiment is to be carried out, then the type of experimental design to be used must be decided, and this may be ex post facto, split-run, before-and-after with or without control, or a formal experimental design based on statistical theory. Some factors to be considered in setting up research experiments are discussed, and syndicated research services available for testing purposes are described...
eBook - ePub- Robert E Stevens, David L Loudon, Morris E Ruddick, Bruce Wrenn, Philip K Sherwood(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For example, the people who rated their branch lower on the friendliness and satisfaction scales may be from an area populated by high-income households and who may have higher expectations of all aspects of service and who are more difficult to please in general. In such a case, the same level of service and friendliness of personnel among the branches is perceived differently by respondents, as is their level of overall satisfaction. Any causal inference drawn from ex post facto research, although indicating a possible causal relationship, must be supplemented with true experimental or quasi-experimental studies before we can draw cause-effect conclusions. However, in some cases, merely demonstrating covariation between variables of interest is sufficient for marketing planning purposes. We merely must be careful not to assume we know more than we can legitimately claim we do. TEST MARKETING Test marketing is the name given to a set of experimental or quasi-experimental (field) studies that are intended to determine the rate of market acceptance for (usually) a new product. A company typically would use test marketing to determine such information as: • The sales volume and market share expectations of the new product. • An estimate of the repurchase cycle and likelihood of repurchase. • A profile of trier-adopters. • An understanding of competitor reactions to the new product. • Some feel for the effect of the new product sales on existing product sales. • The performance of a new product package design in generating trial and satisfaction. With the cost and likelihood of new product failure, marketers conducting test markets avoid large-scale introduction of products destined to fail. On the other hand, test marketing itself may cost millions of dollars, delay the cash flow of a successful new product, and alert competitors to your plans, so the costs may be high in either case...
eBook - ePubDo Economists Make Markets?
On the Performativity of Economics
- Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa, Siu Leung-Sea, Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa, Lucia Siu(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
...This is already noticeable if we limit the notion of experiment to the realm of academic science, as in the case of laboratory experimental economics (see Guala’s chapter in this volume). But it becomes even more remarkable if we expand the notion of experiment to the multiple research activities that are at work in markets and other economic institutions. Experimental techniques are extensively used in marketing research, financial engineering, and economic policy design. Marketing research techniques such as consumer tests and focus groups are market experiments that include a performative stance: they are about how to observe attachments between consumers and goods but also about how to enact them (Cochoy 1998). For experiments that use a real economy as their testing ground (as in the case of the release of the test version of a product in a controlled retail area), the performative stance is even clearer. The case of postmarketing surveillance of pharmaceutical drug effects—“pharmacovigilance”—convincingly illustrates how markets can be configured as testing sites (Daemmrich 2004, pp. 116–150). Financial markets provide particularly telling examples of the experimental nature of the construction of new tradable products or the implementation of new pricing techniques (e.g., MacKenzie 2003; MacKenzie and Millo 2003). 2 The fact that a national economy can be used (or even explicitly constructed) to test an economic doctrine should also be regarded as a revealing, sometimes critical example of this performative capacity of economic experiments (Bockman and Eyal 2002; Goswami 2004; Mitchell 1998, 2002; Morgan and Den Butter 2000; Stark 1999; Valdés 1995). Economic experiments are increasingly becoming a constitutive element of the construction of markets—which are increasingly presented as experimental artifacts...
eBook - ePub- Alan Bryman(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In this chapter, the factors that facilitate the detection of causality from experimental designs will be elucidated. Second, because of the facility with which researchers employing experimental designs are able to establish cause and effect, the experiment is frequently perceived as a model research design. This point will be especially apparent when survey research, from which causal findings are less easy to establish, is examined. In everyday speech, we frequently employ the term ‘experiment’ very loosely to denote trying something out and observing the consequences of our action. Social scientists and others who write about experiments see them as involving something more than merely trying something out; in particular, the idea of ‘control’ is essential. The idea of control implies the elimination of alternative explanations of the apparent connection between a putative cause and a particular effect. We may say that we are going to ‘experiment’ with a different route when we drive to work one day; if we find that the time taken is a few minutes more, we should be very careful about saying that the alternative route was the cause of the greater time taken; the volume of traffic may not have been typical, and we may have driven more tentatively because of our unfamiliarity with the route. In other words, we have not controlled, and hence eliminated, these alternative possibilities. This notion is akin to the need to control the potentially contaminating effects of heat, light and humidity in the natural scientist’s laboratory. What we want to be able to demonstrate is that our supposed independent variable, and that variable alone, is the cause of variation in the dependent variable. On the other hand, to anticipate slightly some of the issues that will be examined below, conducting research on themes deriving from organization studies runs into some specific problems when the natural scientist’s laboratory is used as a yardstick...
- Fevzi Okumus, S. Mostafa Rasoolimanesh, Shiva Jahani, Fevzi Okumus, S. Mostafa Rasoolimanesh, Shiva Jahani(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Emerald Publishing Limited(Publisher)
...For this case, experimental design is appropriate. The hotelier randomly assigns some room service orders to a robotic server and others to a human server. If satisfaction level is higher for the robot server than the human server, the use of robots has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. On the other hand, if the hotelier questions whether customers are satisfied with the service provided by robotic server, survey will be suitable as comparison between robots and human servers is not required. These two examples illustrate the importance of alignment between research questions and methods. The Experimental Researchers should spell out a question that is best addressed using experimental approach. Although practical relevance and implications are paramount for hospitality and tourism research, it does not mean that theoretical implications are negligible. Top-tier hospitality and tourism journals stipulate theoretical contribution. Experiment is especially useful for testing of theory because of its high internal validity derived from the manipulation of independent variables in a controlled setting. The effects of extraneous or confounding variables would be minimized (if not totally ruled out) in experimentation, so that the conclusion of a “causal effect” is legitimate. Some hospitality and tourism researchers would explain their contributions by highlighting the lack of research in the contexts (e.g., hotel, travel agent). However, context-specific contribution is not equivalent to theoretical contribution. Instead, findings drawn from studies in the contexts of hospitality and tourism that are generalizable to other contexts (e.g., daily life or business contexts) would be valuable for theory advancement. The authors need to clearly articulate a cross-context or fundamental contribution of their study in the introductory section of their Experimental Research papers...
