Product Overview

This is a collection of four caselets that aim to provide a rich discussion around why experimentation in business is important and how it can be properly designed to improve short-term tactical and long-term strategic decisions. Specifically, this document presents four different business problems that could be resolved with proper experimentation techniques. The decisions range from the initial evaluation of whether an experiment is needed to how it can be designed, implemented, and evaluated to how it can be improved and sustained. This case would be best used alongside the technical note "To Understand Consumer Behavior, Think Like a Marketplace Scientist" (UVA-M-0950), as learnings from that note can be leveraged and applied to tackle the issues here. Ultimately, this reading allows MBA students and industry professionals alike an opportunity to practice being effective designers, analyzers, and proponents of experimentation.

Learning Objectives

- Introduce students to the use of experimentation in marketing. - Understand components of scientific experimentation, and practice identifying the difference between quasi-experiments and scientific method. - Identify the situations in which experiments might be most useful. - Discuss the strengths and limitations of experiments. - Practice designing experiments to evaluate consumer behavior.