Checking the Success of Manipulations in Marketing Experiments

The authors discuss several issues in the timing, construction, and analysis of manipulation and confounding checks in marketing experiments. A review of 34 experiments involving latent independent variables reported in the Journal of Marketing Research over the past decade suggests that most researchers are familiar with the concept of manipulation checks but few systematically evaluate potential sources of confounding in experimental manipulations. Three alternative approaches for assessing the construct validity of experimental manipulations also are discussed.