Question

*NEED ASAP*

An online retailer wants to study whether more

lenient return policies increase purchasing

behaviors. They select a random sample of

2000 customers who have made purchases in

the past year.

The

company

ranks the customers according to

total cost of purchases made the previous year.

For every 2 customers, in order, from the list,

the online retailer randomly assigns one

customer to the treatment group and the other

to the control group.

What type of experiment design is this?


Systematic

Cluster

Randomized block

Matched pairs

Completely ramdomized

Answer 1

From what you've described, I think this is a matched-pairs design. Matched-pairs designs take similar subjects, and randomly assign one to a treatment group and one to a control group. Here, the matched pairs are the customers ranked in pairs in order of cost of purchases, and then randomized. You can tell it's a matched-pairs design because you matched the subjects based on a shared variable (cost of purchases).