Problem: A company wants to research the effectiveness of different types of marketing on a consumer perspective. The company leadership is comprised of mostly Christians. In a meeting, they were discussing to what extent they should "let their good works be seen of men" (Matthew 5:16) versus Matthew 6:1, which says "do not practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen of them". One has been hired to evaluate the company's efforts and perhaps direct their future marketing efforts. Specifically, they are wondering whether advertising efforts emphasizing the company's community service and philanthropic efforts can be under or over saturated in regards to how consumers view the company.
To assess this, one has been tasked to research the consumer rating on this issue. Therefore, one must design a study where the target one group of consumers with low philanthropic advertising, another group with high philanthropic advertising, and a placebo group which will be shown the same number of company advertising but without the philanthropic focus. Data collection will involve a measure to collect the ratings of likelihood to purchase from this company by the participants/potential customers. They have agreed to pay the expenses to have a group of participants come to a neutral location to watch advertisements for several hours in one day. Because travel and food cost have increased, and because they are paying the researcher such a great salary, they have only agreed to a small number of participants.
Using the information above, identify the dependent variable and its important characteristics, including the scale of measurement, needed to accurately design for the study.