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The purpose of this study is to present a systematic methodological review of the application of field experiments in the domain of marketing research. By performing this study, the authors seek to offer necessary advice and suggestions to marketing scholars interested in the application of field experiments and to promote the adoption of field experiments as a preferred methodological choice among scholars in this domain.

A total of 315 field experiments published in the ten leading marketing journals in the past five decades were analyzed in this systematic methodological review. This study examines various aspects of field experiments, including the research profile of existing research, different trends and topics related to field experiments, choice of research questions, methods of observations, unobtrusive data collection, types of interventions and outcome variables.

This study identified various trends and topics, categories of manipulations, types of limitations and important considerations in designing field experiments and offered necessary advice on the future of field experiments in marketing research.

This study provides a complete roadmap for future marketing scholars to adopt field studies in their research plans. The systematic summary of limitations and the checklist will be helpful for the researchers to design and execute field studies more effectively and efficiently.

This review study offers a complete roadmap for marketing scholars who are interested in adopting field experiments in their research projects. The discussion of trends and topics, manipulations, limitations, design considerations and checklist items for field experiments offers relevant insights to marketing scholars and may help them design and execute field experiments more effectively and efficiently.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive methodological review of field experiments published in leading marketing journals throughout the past five decades. This study makes novel and unique contributions to both theory and literature on field experiments in the marketing discipline.

The role of debt in episodes of financial stability is a topic of increasing important as the global economy struggles to recover from the worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mortgage finance booms of the 1920s and 2000s as natural experiments, new insights into debt-driven financial crises are gained.

The general methodology is interpreting anomalous historical events as natural experiments. The specific methodology is the approach to natural experiments provided by Joseph A. Schumpeter and Milton Friedman. The hypothesis tested is that laxity in lending standards was the prime contributor to the mortgage debt booms. In each case, we explain why factors other than laxity in lending standards would be secondary factors, with the pre-boom and post-boom lending standards providing the control groups of natural experiments. The two episodes of mortgage debt booms occurring under very different general economic and financial conditions provide an especially strong test of the hypothesized functional relationship.

The results of the two natural experiments support the hypothesis that lax lending standards were the prime contributors to the two episodes of debt-driven financial crisis.

From a social economics perspective, the insights gained are important because a major social goal has been to encourage greater opportunities for home ownership. The results of these natural experiments provide guidance for policymakers in the search for a viable balance between achieving that social goal and maintaining financial stability.

If we are to examine the role of “controls” in different experimental settings, it is appropriate that the word be defined carefully. The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition) defines the verb “control” in the following manner: “To exercise restraint or direction upon the free action of; to hold sway over, exercise power or authority over; to dominate, command.” So the word means something more active and interventionist than is suggested by it’s colloquial clinical usage. Control can include such mundane things as ensuring sterile equipment in a chemistry lab, to restrain the free flow of germs and unwanted particles that might contaminate some test.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate and discuss methodology issues in menu-labelling experiments in commercial full-service restaurants, and to investigate how the menu description and price affects customers’ choice of an organic veal entrée in a Norwegian restaurant.

A menu-labelling experiment was conducted in a fine-dining restaurant during ordinary opening hours over a period of two weeks. The menu description of an organic veal entrée was altered repeatedly and the effect of these changes on the sales of this entrée was investigated.

Adding words to the menu description, such as “organic”, or describing animal welfare had a very limited effect on customers’ choices in the restaurant.

The research illustrates the use of a natural field experiment in a commercial full-service restaurant and discusses strengths and weaknesses of the methodology.

Few experiments have been performed on the effect on credence attributes in commercial full-service restaurants and there is little knowledge about research challenges in menu-labelling experiments. This paper contributes to the knowledge on both issues by conducting a natural field experiment in a fine-dining restaurant.

There are several ways to define words. One is to ascertain the formal definition by looking it up in the dictionary. Another is to identify what it is that you want the word-label to differentiate.

This chapter examines the external validity of lab experiments on corruption by evaluating the extent to which experimental results are robust to the degree of field context included in the experimental design. To do so, we follow Harrison and List (2004) and partition corruption experiments into four classes depending on their field context. A comparison of the results obtained within each class reveals that similar treatment effects tend to emerge. Although a definitive answer to the external validity question has yet to be provided, these preliminary results provide some support to the external validity of lab experiments on corruption.

We discuss how experimental analysis can be integrated into strategic human resources management (SHRM) research in Africa so as to develop theory and value principles to guide executives.

The model we propose – experiment-based SHRM – is predicated on the use of experimental approaches to demonstrate the value of SHRM and to derive principles that guide research and practice in Africa.

We illustrate how scholars can conduct experiments from an SHRM perspective.

We discuss the strengths and limitations of the model and suggest ways of maximizing its potential.

The technique is a resource for scholars of SHRM in Africa. They can use it to supplement other approaches for studying SHRM.

This chapter discusses a typology of experimental analysis. The lack of such a typology in the context of Africa makes it a valuable contribution. Thus, it fills a contextual gap in the SHRM research methodology literature. It can therefore help graduate students and junior faculty improve their research.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the emerging field of experimental research on entrepreneurship to better understand its development and potential.

A systematic, evidence-based literature review was applied, resulting in a sample of 47 articles having used experiments in entrepreneurship research so far. The papers are analyzed according to their topic, methods, and research design, revealing insight into their limitations and prospective contributions.

The paper discusses the potential and disadvantages of experimental methods while arguing for experiments as the method of choice for answering causality questions. This study finds a persistent increase in experimental entrepreneurship research since its introduction in 1990.

The study provides research from the field of entrepreneurship with future directions, with potential research areas and an orientation for those interested in conducting experiments.

Experiments are employed in a variety of research areas and have become more and more popular in the field of entrepreneurship. No study has analyzed the experimental studies in entrepreneurship. This paper contributes by providing an overview of the field, reflecting and discussing the outcomes while characterizing the methods employed.

This study aims to systematically review a total of 513 papers using experimental methods in hospitality and tourism research and then proposed new recommendations to address approaches that have been confusingly adopted or ignored in the current literature.

An extensive literature review was conducted. Together with critiques on previous studies, four recommendations were proposed to help carry out future experimental studies using more rigorous and exact approaches.

Multiple experimental studies can provide stronger evidence for theoretical arguments. Demonstration of the theoretical underlying mechanism using evidence based on mediation and moderating methods is required. The adoption of complementary methods can mitigate the generic weaknesses of experimental methods. In addition, enhancement of the realism of experiments is required to obtain stronger empirical evidence with internal and external validity.

This study proposes four constructive recommendations which help researchers to conduct future experimental design studies correctly. Valid and exact research outcomes can help practitioners to carry out new useful marketing strategies.

After reviewing 513 previous papers that used experimental design in the hospitality and tourism fields, this study proposes four new recommendations to facilitate a better understanding of experimental design. The original and innovative nature of this study will help future investigations to adopt more accurate statistical approaches.

Based on previous inventories, the purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge on public administration experiments by focusing on their experimental type, design, sample type and realism levels and external validity. The aim is to provide an overview of experimental public administration and formulate potential ways forward.

The authors examine the current state of experimental public administration, by looking at a systematic selection of ISI ranked experimental publications in major public administration journals (1992-2014) and recommend ways forward based on this review.

The review indicates a rise in experimentation in public administration in recent years, this can be attributed mostly to some subfields of public administration. Furthermore, most experiments in public administration tend to have relatively simple designs, high experimental realism and a focus on external validity. Experimental public administration can be strengthened by increasing diversification in terms of samples, experimental designs, experimental types and substantive scope. Finally, the authors recommend to better utilize experiments to generate usable knowledge for practitioners and to replicate experiments to improve scientific rigour.

This paper contributes to experimental public administration by drawing on a systematic selection of papers and assessing them in depth. By means of a transparent and systematic selection of publications, various venues or ways forward are presented.