experimantal and causal methods, I need help!

[franci pazza]

Hi!

I have a doubt with regard to the “experimental design”. I found in
some books of marketing research methods, that there are three kinds of
research design: exploratory (data driven), descriptive, and causal
(hypotheses driven). What I would like to know is if the “experimental method” is the same one of the “causal” one, because they are actually
based on hypotheses and they seeks to find cause and effect relationships between variables. someone have heard about them? can you please help me?

Another doubt is related to the different tools to use for
experimental methods.which ones are they?
 If I would like to investigate on customer bahaviours, trying
to test two variables, can I use questionnaires or is it better an
experiment based on focus groups? I need to gather a wide range of
people’s opinions so that I thought about questionnaires. Might it be
right? or is there any better tool to use?I will appreciate any suggestion or advice.
Thank you for your help and time,

Francesca

[benjaporn Yamngamlour]

I never heard the experimental design in the way you describe. the thing I have known is all about the hypothesis testing under our fixed condition (variable with some levels)

To investigate on costomer behavior, if you mean the shopper I think about the mystery shopper. Let’s observe their behavior during shopping or the activity that you are focusing.

I ‘ve ever done the shelf test that let people come to visit our arrangement shelf (under our setting condition ) then we observe them choose the product . And we ask them to rate score and answer the reason later .

Hope it can help.

[Pat Bazeley]

Hi Francesca,
You sound a bit confused. Opinions and behaviours are two different things. For opinions you might use a focus group or questionnaire, for behaviours observation would be best, but if you can’t do that, then you might use a questionnaire – but they are quite unreliable at getting information about behaviour because people don’t necessarily want to tell you what they usually do (or aren’t really aware, or don’t remember).
If you want to assess causality, that is another issue again. Observation under experimental conditions (such as those described by Benjaporn) might tell you if something occurs more regularly under a particular condition, but it doesn’t tell you what the mechanism is (why it is happening) – so then you need, say, to interview the person to find out what was going on in their mind when they made that choice.
Pat

[GIUSEPPINA]

Dear Francesca,
I think that you can use a test with two variables, you can use a questionnaire based on an experimental group. You have the good idea to collect a wide range of people’s opinion.
Best regards, Giuseppina

[GIUSEPPINA]

Dear Francesca,
I think that your doubts are right. I think that is necessary that is clear for you the objective of your search field, after you can find the questionaire required.
Good lack, Giuseppina

[Author]

Posts