Hello all, This is not exactly a SAS issue but more of a Marketing/Statistics domain issue.

Test/Case and Control Matching: Background: I work at a retail chain and I am working on analyzing promotional programs. We run some marketing programs at certain stores(called test group) and then want to test the performance of that test against a 'control' group. Frequently we need to pick some other retail stores to use as a control group to validate a promotion/test program, which ran at a few 'test' stores.

The difficulty I am facing is "How to identify a control store(s) and what are the techniques available?". And how to match a control to a test. I understand the theory of using clustering on matching variables and model specification is painstakingly slow. I am interested to know other ways and generate some creative ideas of looking at the test-control issue.

I have looked at the 'match' algorithm posted on this list, using NETFLOW proc. But that is more for a individual case-control used may be for epidemilogy. I am interested to match a group of stores. I am looking it from a statistical perspective of finding a statistical measure to report "How close is a particular control to the test group".

I am currently working on experimental design and am planning to use Clustering as a technique to match test and control stores. Can anyone throw some thoughts/feedback?

Thanks Victor