Conducting Experimental Research on Shopify : An Initial Discussion and Guide to Getting Started

This paper introduces the online behavioral store as a tool for conducting research through e-commerce platforms. Online behavioral stores offer many possible benefits, including enhancing experimental realism, measuring actual behavior, and creating a consequential choice environment. Stores do not need to actually sell products to enhance experimental designs; however, using an online behavioral store to make real sales is a viable strategy for conducting field experiments without a field partner. This paper provides a preliminary guide to creating and using an online behavioral store in a fast and cost-efficient manner. The methods described here do not require any coding knowledge and leverage an assortment of off-the-shelf Shopify tools and third-party applications. Using this approach, you can establish your own store capable of conducting on-site experiments (A/B tests), measuring individual-level behavior, and matching that behavior with external identifiers (e.g., Qualtrics information). The functionality, methods, and best practices surrounding online behavioral stores are in an early stage of development, and all should continue to improve