Introduction
Causal research is an indispensable methodology of any academic science, including marketing. It aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between two or more variables. In practice, it is one of the most complicated techniques in research because it requires a deep knowledge of statistics and skills in collecting relevant data. In addition, there could be some complexities that will damage the internal validity of a study. For example, some variables without control may cause a third variable effect. In this post, some recommendations on possible causal research will be made with an example of ConFundrum.
Main body
Initially, it makes sense to briefly introduce the company. ConFundrum’s business model is connected with interactive quests and rooms, which allow people to spend their free time with relatives and friends (“Home,” n.d.). The rooms are inspired by the plots of horror films and fantasy. The target audience is women from 17 to 50 who want to book an event for their children (“Home,” n.d.). This firm has comparative advantages over its competitors: extended working hours, private rooms, and unlimited clues.
It seems that causal research helped to figure out the main areas of improvement that may attract more customers. Casual research implies that some governing laws of social life may be observed and used for the benefit of some actors (Stromp, 2022). For example, through the use of big data, researchers could formulate a cause-and-effect relationship between extended hours of work and the increased popularity of the facility among people in the neighborhood. Data collection presumes research on competitors or similar examples in other countries. In this case, changing preferences will be a dependent variable, while changes in working hours will be an independent variable, which is the possible factor of causality. Such a test may be done with other possible factors, such as availability of free Wi-Fi connection, online webpage for booking, and others.
The causal research made before changes is a useful strategy for companies to avoid ineffective policies. The reason is that it gives a more nuanced overview of the system (Stromp, 2022). Implementing such preliminary causal research reduces the probability of committing detrimental mistakes, which may cause a great financial loss. In the case of ConFundrum, causal research may explain how sales may expand with increased advertisement spending on the Internet. At the same time, some other variables, such as advertising texts in local newspapers, may be compared to find the most cost-efficient strategy. Fortunately, there are a great number of cases to make cross-country analyses. The analytical article by French and Shaw (2015) indicates that escape games are present in almost all world mega policies, including Asia, Europe, and North America. By controlling some cultural variation and population size, one may get reliable outputs that will help ConFundrum elaborate an improvement strategy.
Conclusion
To conclude, causal research is an entrenched methodology in social sciences and marketing. It allows us to investigate causal mechanisms and cause-and-effect relationships between two or more variables. The problem is that this method requires great experience and knowledge of maths theory and statistics, so a company should hire a professional to conduct such a type of research. Through the example of ConFundrum, this post demonstrated the great role causal research could play. It is beneficial for elaborating verified improvement strategies through rational observation of other examples to find the most cost-effective strategies.
References
French, S., & Shaw, J. M. (2015). The unbelievably lucrative business of escape rooms. Market Watch. Web.
Home. (n.d.). ConFundrum Escape Rooms. Web.
Stromp, S. (2022). Market research essentials. Courseware for Higher Education