Impact of flavor name on consumer choice. Do consumers react favorably to products with ambiguous colors or names? Marketing researchers investigated this phenomenon in the Journal of Consumer Research (June 2005). As a ‘‘reward'' for participating in an unrelated experiment, 100 consumers were told they could have some jelly beans available in several cups on a table. Some consumers were offered jelly beans with common descriptive flavor names (e.g., watermelon green), while the others were offered jelly beans with ambiguous flavor names (e.g., monster green).

Also, some of the consumers took the jelly beans and immediately left (low cognitive load condition), while others were peppered with additional questions designed to distract them while they were taking their jelly beans (high cognitive load condition).

The researchers modeled the number (y) of jelly beans taken by each consumer as a function of two qualitative variables: Flavor Name (common or ambiguous) and Cognitive Load (low or high). The sample mean, , for each of the four combinations of the qualitative variables is shown in the accompanying table.

(a) Write an interaction model for E(y) as a function of Flavor Name and Cognitive Load.

(b) Use the information in the table to estimate the β's in the interaction model.

(c) How would you determine whether the impact of flavor name on E(y) depends on cognitive load? Explain.