@article{2018:spilski:avoiding_p,
title = {Avoiding Pitfalls in Experimental Research in Marketing},
year = {2018},
note = {Experimentation is an important methodology in marketing research and
is the subject of a significant amount of literature. These studies
consider different ways of looking at the issue of experimentation and
may be categorized as follows: (1) Publications asking why and how we
carry out experiments in the first place: the fundamental idea behind
experimentation. (2) Guidelines to be followed during the experimental
process. (3) Statistical methods for analyzing experimental data. (4)
Studies focusing on specific methodological problems. (5) Warnings
against bad practice. In the current article we cover areas 2, 4 and
5. We attempt to make experimental researchers, especially those who
are novices in the area of experimentation, aware of the possible
pitfalls that occur during the process, from planning experiments to
discussing results. We present a list of the questions frequently
raised by our own students and discussed in the recent literature.
Although it is beyond the scope of our paper to treat all of these
questions in detail, we provide references to more detailed studies
where appropriate. In particular, we examine the following issues:
What constitutes a contribution to the marketing literature? What
should I consider when formulating hypotheses? What are the different
approaches to developing hypotheses? Where do hypotheses come from?
How can I formulate hypotheses about moderation effects? How can I
formulate mediation hypotheses? Can I combine moderation and
mediation? What should I do if random assignment of participants to
conditions is not possible? Should I use a between-subjects or a
within-subjects design? Should I manipulate or measure variables? What
should I take into consideration concerning the realism of the
experiment? Which items and scales should I use for measurements? In
which order should I arrange the constructs in the questionnaire? Must
the independent variable be discrete and the dependent variable
continuous? What should I take into account concerning the use of
random samples vs. convenience samples? Should I tell respondents what
the study is about? Which checks should I consider before testing the
hypothesis? Can I remove cases if those checks indicate lower quality?
When should I consider covariates? I have considered a moderator
variable that has been measured as a continuous variable. Can I
dichotomize in order to calculate ANOVA? Why should I include an
effect size calculation? Which parameters of the findings should be
reported? What should I do if the effect that I proposed turns out to
be not what I expected? What should I take into consideration
concerning the generalizability of the results? Our review of
literature from the last five years shows that the discussion about
experimental procedures and specific techniques is far from complete.
Unsurprisingly, the replication crisis in social psychology and
related areas has led to demand for more guidance by experienced
researchers. Several journals feature regular tutorials or special
issues on methodological problems. Novice researchers are advised to
avoid merely citing authors of other experimental studies who use
appealing procedures (“they did it that way, therefore so do I”)
and instead provide arguments in favor of their procedures, drawing
attention to recent developments in experimentation.},
journal = {Marketing ZFP},
pages = {58--94},
author = {Spilski, Anja and Gröppel-Klein, Andrea and Gierl, Heribert},
volume = {40},
number = {2}
}