Exam 3: Research Design

A firm selects a test market city that it believes will give them very favourable results because it knows the media will publicize the "success" of the new test product. This may not yield the best test market city, but it would not be considered to be unethical.

Lightspeed Research provides clients with access to consumer households specializing in online connections who have agreed to answer research questions sent to them by Lightspeed Research. This service is called:

True experimental designs do not have to resort to relying on experimental and control groups.

The One-Group, Before-After design is a quasi-experimental design.

A packaged consumer goods company wanted to measure the level of brand loyalty that exists amongst its current consumer base. This is an example of exploratory research.

Projective techniques are used to find consumers' hidden motives when buying.

Longitudinal studies are called such because they are very long, complex surveys. They have large sample sizes and require several months to complete the data analysis.

In which of the following situations should exploratory research be used?

Because all products eventually end up in the consumer market, there is no such thing as industrial test markets.

As reflected in the example of brand-switching data provided by the textbook (Pooch Plus dog treats), cross-sectional study analysis can provide a totally different conclusion than longitudinal data analysis.

What type of panel should be used in brand-switching studies?

Cellular Inc. makes a major breakthrough in cell phone technology and design. Their research and development department has created advanced micro-circuitry that is one hundred times more sensitive to cell signals than conventional cell phones. This means that there is almost never a break in cell phone signals even when the caller is several miles from what would be considered "in range" for conventional phones. The problem is that the new technology adds about $100 to the cost of the phone. Cellular Inc. must spend a considerable amount of funds to retool in order to produce the new phones. They decide to test market the new phones. The company is located in Toronto and several executives believe it would be less costly to run the test market in their own city. However, one of the marketing managers has argued for running at least two test markets; one in Guelph, Ontario and one in Red Deer, Alberta. What criterion for test market selection is the marketing manager using?

Several online research firms such as CRC Research and ACNielsen use panels as a means of conducting research.

Experimental designs provide procedures for devising an experimental setting, such that a change in an independent variable may be attributed solely to the change in the dependent variable while controlling for the effects of complex variables.

Designs that do not control for the effects of extraneous variables are known as quasi-experimental designs.

The reason for using randomization or matching in experimental designs is to achieve equivalency between experimental and control groups.

What type of test markets are conducted by outside research firms who guarantee distribution of the product through prespecified types and numbers of distributors?

The larger the focus group the better the information collected.

The dependent variable is always manipulated in the experimental group but never in the control group.

Discontinuous panels are sometimes called omnibus panels.