Illustrated Example

A supermarket intended to determine the affect of change in

packaging style (independent variable) on sales of mangoes
(dependent variable) through experimentation. At the time
of the decision, the store sold the produce in pre-weighted
packs containing two mangoes. After recording the sales of
mangoes in this manner management changed (manipulates
the independent variable) the packaging system and started
selling the mangoes from open produce bins. The change
yielded better sales figures. Now the question was “Did the
change in the system from the packs of two to free selection
from produce bins caused this sales increase?”

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Question: “Did the change from selling in packs of two to
free selection from produce bins caused this sales increase?”

In answering this question, the following questions need to be

answered:
 Could there be other variables that could have effected mango sales?
 What would happen to the sales if the weather changed from rainy to fair?
 Did the change take place during a festive season?
In this example, weather and the onset of the festive season etc.
may be viewed as extraneous variables, having an effect on the
dependent variable. However, these are not independent variables.
This example clearly shows that isolating the effects of independent
variables on dependent variables without controlling for the effects
of the extraneous variables is very difficult.
Experimental designs help to accomplish this task.
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 Experimental Design: the mango example

• Divide the 16 supermarkets in two equivalent groups of 8 - one control

group, the other experimental group.
• In the shops in control group, DO NOT CHANGE the packaging style, in
the experimental group, make the change.
• Measure the sales for both groups before the experiment date and after
the experiment date.
• Assume that the difference in the two groups are as below:
After Before Difference
• Control group 30,720units [O4] 27,980 [O3] 2,740 [O4 - O3]
• Experimental group 31,688 [O2] 27,816 [O1] 3,872 [O2 - O1]
• Sales increase due to new system 1,132
Change = (O2 -- O1) -- (O4 -- O3 )