Designing Vignette Studies in Marketing

In empirical marketing studies, vignettes are increasingly used to develop measurement scales, assess public/organizational policy, and study key variables in judging the decisions or actions of a protagonist. Despite their frequent use, integrated recommendations for creating vignettes are limited. A brief introduction to vignette methods and their previous applications in marketing is provided. This is followed by suggestions for designing vignettes and vignette-based studies based on a review of the literature. The suggestions form a checklist that should help researchers who conduct vignette-based studies to consider all relevant issues and thus obtain valid data.