Design an experiment to test whether in-store doughnut sampling influences sales of the doughnuts and/or the overall store sales. What should the independent and dependent variables be?

Imagine you work in the marketing department for a mid-sized regional bakery that sells doughnuts, cookies, and snack cakes in retail grocery stores. Your company would like to increase sales of its doughnuts and is considering an in-store sampling campaign to generate more interest in the product. This campaign would involve offering retail customers free samples of doughnuts in stores, along with a coupon for a discount on a box of doughnuts. You know that taste is a powerful sense and would like to engage the consumer in as many ways as possible to entice them to buy the product.

For this campaign to be implemented, you need to convince your superiors in the company that giving away free doughnut samples, a sizable investment in product and labor, may actually increase sales. In addition, you suspect that retail grocery store managers are likely to be interested in how this in-store sampling campaign may influence overall store sales. You realize that some marketing research is needed. You decide to run an experiment in one local grocery store.