Marketing Research, 11th Edition

CHAPTER 9Primary Data Collection: Experimentation and Test Markets

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Understand the nature of experiments.
2. Gain insight into requirements for proving causation.
3. Learn about the experimental setting.
4. Examine experimental validity.
5. Compare types of experimental designs.
6. Understand extraneous variables.
7. Analyze experimental design, treatment, and effects.
8. Examine the limitations of experimental research.
9. Evaluate selected experimental designs.
10. Gain insight into test marketing.

Experiments are the cornerstone of science and the foundation of the scientific method. The first part of this chapter covers the basics of experiments, types of experiments, how to demonstrate causation, experimental validity, and other aspects of experiments that apply to the world of science in general and to marketing research in particular.

One of the things you will see is how difficult it is to do an experiment that really definitively proves that a change in one thing really caused a change in another thing. This type of proof is particularly difficult in marketing where we have the complexity and messiness of the market place to deal with. For example, we increased advertising by $10 million, what was the change in sales, if any, caused by this increase in advertising?

The second part of the chapter presents some common ways that experiments are used in marketing research including ...