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  • March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
  • Exercise

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:2
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Abstract

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades is an exercise in which students are asked to analyze and make a recommendation on the basis of simulated experimental data. The setting is a hypothetical restaurant review company called RestaurantGrades (RG), which shows advertisements above the organic search results when someone searches on the page. RG is trying to understand whether the current advertising package it sells to restaurants is effective at driving traffic—and whether an alternative advertising package might be better. To do this, RG has run an experiment with two treatment groups and a control group—with random assignment done at the restaurant level. Restaurants in the control group are provided with no advertising; restaurants in the first treatment group are given RG's current advertising package, and restaurants in the second treatment group are given an alternative advertising package. Students are provided with the resulting data—which includes an indicator for which arm a business was in, as well as outcomes at the monthly level for each business—and asked to assess which advertising package is more effective. The exercise provides students with an opportunity for experiential learning around the use of experiments to guide business decisions.

Keywords

Analysis; Digital Marketing

Citation

Luca, Michael, Weijia Dai, and Hyunjin Kim. "Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades." Harvard Business School Exercise 916-038, March 2016. (Revised February 2023.)
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Related Work

    • March 2016
    • Faculty Research

    Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

    By: Weijia Dai, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca
    • March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

    By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim
    • March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

    By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim
Related Work
  • Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades By: Weijia Dai, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca
  • Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim
  • Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim
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