Marketers know that running experiments is a proven way to improve results and gain competitive advantage against rivals. Despite this knowledge—and the fact that experiments are now easier to conduct than ever before—data shows that marketers consistently under-experiment. In this article, we examine why this gap exists and what can be done to close it. We do so by connecting with senior-level marketing professionals representing seven consumer-facing industries in two phases. First, through a series of interviews, we gain initial understanding of the concerns, challenges, and realities of those working in the industry. Following this phase, we surveyed a larger group to corroborate and extend our initial findings, comparing cases to identify challenges and the strategies used to overcome them. We present our findings as a series of experimentation myths before closing with a broader perspective on how organizations can infuse experimentation into their culture.

营销人员知道，运行实验是一种行之有效的方法，可以提高结果并获得与竞争对手的竞争优势。尽管有这些知识——而且实验现在比以往任何时候都更容易进行——数据显示营销人员一直在实验不足。在本文中，我们将研究为什么存在这种差距以及可以采取哪些措施来缩小差距。为此，我们分两个阶段与代表七个面向消费者的行业的高级营销专业人士建立联系。首先，通过一系列采访，我们初步了解了业内人士的担忧、挑战和现实。在这个阶段之后，我们调查了一个更大的群体，以证实和扩展我们的初步调查结果，比较案例以确定挑战以及用于克服这些挑战的策略。