Explain laboratory and field environments. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of laboratory experiments compared to field experiments

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A laboratory environment is an artificial setting for experimentation in which the researcher constructs the desired conditions. A field environment is an experimental location set in actual market conditions.

Laboratory experiments have some advantages over field experiments. The laboratory environment offers a high degree of control because it isolates the experiment in a carefully monitored environment. Therefore, the effects of history can be minimized. A laboratory experiment also tends to produce the same results if repeated with similar subjects, leading to high internal validity. Laboratory experiments tend to use a small number of test units, last for a shorter time, are more restricted geographically, and are easier to conduct than field experiments. Hence, they are generally less expensive as well. As compared to field experiments, laboratory experiments suffer from some disadvantages. The artificiality of the environment may cause reactive error, in that the respondents react to the situation itself, rather than to the independent variable. Finally, laboratory experiments are likely to have lower external validity than field experiments. Because a laboratory experiment is conducted in an artificial environment, the ability to generalize the results to the real world may be diminished.

Laboratory experiments allow for more complex designs than field experiments. Hence, the researcher can control for more factors or variables in the laboratory setting, increasing external validity. The researcher must consider all of these factors when deciding whether to conduct laboratory or field experiments. Field experiments are less common in marketing research than laboratory experiments, although laboratory and field experiments play complementary roles.