Quantitative Marketing Research in the Digital Age 2022/2023
Digital Marketing Case Challenge
*PLEASE USE SPSS SOFEWARE FOR THIS WORK
**THIS IS A GROUP PROJECT, SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO COMPLETE THE FULL REPORT. PLEASE NOTICE THE RED LETTERS, THAT’S THE PART YOU HAVE TO DO BUT PLEASE DO READ EVERYTHING IN THIS BRIEF FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING
Project Brief
This project is developed in cooperation with Bind, a xxx-based digital marketing agency. For this project, you will addressing a real-life business challenge. Many website owners are locked into a cycle of redesigning and rebuilding their website every 3-5 years. However, many leading technology companies are moving away from this approach to more agile and lean ways of working. A key change is the introduction of website experimentation that allows marketing and IT teams to improve their website over time, rather than start from scratch every few years.
Imagine Bind invite you to help with a process of redesigning a website for Patch Plants, an online retailer selling plants to private homes (B2C context) and offices (B2B context). Specifically, your task would be to design an experiment (A/B test) Patch Plants could run on their website. It is very important you understand that Patch Plants do not wish to change their website completely. Their objective is to locate some sections of the website, which if changed slightly, could lead to better conversion rate (sales).
Their objective is to locate some sections of the website, which if changed slightly, could lead to better conversion rate (sales). The project will require you to analyse data provided to you and provide a detailed implementation plan for an A/B test (i.e., an experiment) aiming to address the problem outlined.
We do not want you to redesign all the pages. Ideally, you want to think about one page (or even a section of the page) and propose an experiment with 2 or 3 independent variables, maximum. For each independent variable consider 2, at most 3 variations. Do consider your sample size and power.
Before you propose your A/B test, you will need to make some decisions in relation to:
1) The stage of the consumer journey you wish to intervene in
2) The section of the website you wish to design the test for (you should choose either product details page or product listing page.
3) Which device to design the test for (mobile, tablet or desktop) I chose Mobile for this section
To deliver your solution, you will get access to a number of datasets that you will need to analyse. The data sets and their description will become available throughout the semesters.
Your solution can relate to the Patch Plant product detail page or product category/listing page. The choice of what to test is yours. However, you MUST justify the decisions you make.
To address the brief, we recommend you follow the process outlined below.
Goals and Objectives
Define success criteria for your experiment with a high level aim and specific details of the metrics that you will use to measure success.
• High level objectives examples:
o Show more relevant products to users to increase browsing
o Help users to make a purchase decision through engaging content
• Key metrics examples:
o Product page visits o Add to basket rate
o Purchase conversion rate
Research
Carry out secondary research (i.e., material published in industry reports such as Mintel or Statista and in academic journal articles) and primary research (thorough analysis of the data sets provided) to explore potential customer struggles or opportunities to improve the shopping experience
Decide on the scope of your experiment. This may be a template change that affects all product pages, or changes that are specific to certain products. Ensure you justify your decision(s).
• Where are we now? (Make sure you focus on the company and website)
o Company background
o Market size
o Demographics (Consumer)
o Environment
– SWOT
– TOWS
• Create consumer profile and consumer journey
• Towards goals and objectives (show your skills of data analysis)
Potential problems (research):
o Consumer journey, which stage, how measured?
o Which pages? (Product listing/product detail)
o Which devices?
o State the main problems and objectives for your test
The report should be problem/execution focused and aimed at senior management. You want to make sure that what you propose is clear, well justified and easy to follow. Executives do not want to see tables with data analysis. They want to see actionable insights.

Ideation and Prioritization
Create a range of ideas, turn them into structured hypotheses and prioritise them in a structured way. You should pay attention to the creativity of your ideas, logic behind your hypotheses and rationale behind your prioritization.
Experimental Design
Define your experimental settings, such as audience, device, metrics, and success criteria.
Variation (manipulation) development. Describe the changes that you would implement in your variation(s) to change behaviour and change your success metrics. Consider how to maximize internal and external validity of your results.
Create wireframes or designs that show how the variations would look to the user.
Consider designing a pilot study where you could pre-test whether your manipulations convey the meaning you want it to have (this is important in cases when your variations are theoretically driven, e.g., when you wish to make variations that would reflect certain images or appeals). If you decide to have a pilot study, it might be a good idea to present the design of this study in a Qualtrics questionnaire. Link to the questionnaire could be submitted with the coursework). *If you decide to have a pilot study, you need to provide me with the questions*
Consider limitations of your proposed experiment and consider potential remedies (e.g., future research).
Evaluation
Present a summary of your planned work and expected results. As a minimum you should include:
• Experiment Title
• Hypotheses
• Experiment details (launch date, expected duration, traffic allocation)
• Expected results for key metrics
Deliverables
A coursework submitted in the form of an essay (research notes) on summarizing your research and your proposed experiment (A/B test) plan.
Research notes. Use this space to show us how you used market/website/consumer insights to develop your solution. Research notes are typically used when marketing agencies present solutions to their clients. Usually, it is very difficult to convey all the relevant information in a presentation. Hence, research notes are commonly used to provide the rationale behind various decisions.
Useful Resources
Books
Goward, C., 2012. You should test that: Conversion optimization for more leads, sales and profit or the art and science of optimized marketing. John Wiley & Sons.
Journals Articles
Homburg, C., Schwemmle, M., and Kuehnl, C. New product design: Concept, measurement, and consequences. Journal of Marketing 79.3 (2015): 41-56
Kuehnl, C., Jozic, D. and Homburg, C., 2019. Effective customer journey design: consumers’ conception, measurement, and consequences. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(3), pp.551-568
Kaufman, R.L., Pitchforth, J. and Vermeer, L., 2017. Democratizing online controlled experiments at Booking.com. arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.08217.
Blogs
https://conversionxl.com/blog/
https://vwo.com/blog/
Learning Outcomes
• Be able to present a reasoned argument or rationale for a study or a decision
• Understand the application of experiments and multivariate testing methods in (digital) marketing research
• Show ability to choose and conduct appropriate statistical analysis for determining the relationship between two/multiple variables
• Develop a client-focused solution to a marketing problem
• Communicate academic and applied knowledge, concepts and ideas professionally and creatively
• Appreciate limitations of your research and suggest remedies (e.g., future research)
• Recognize implications of research results for practice