This question relates to the US guidelines (I am conducting an online experiment from abroad).
In the experiment, I would like to look at consumer switching cost in different psychological states. In order to measure the switching cost, I am planning to replicate Jiang et al. (2014) where they gave the respondents the possibility to choose from 4 brands of chocolate bars and then tested how varied their choices were (= whether they always picked the same brand or were more varied in their choices).
If I want to replicate the study, can I use pictures of the products (brand visible) in an online experiment or should I contact the company behind each brand to ask for consent?
If the companies don't operate in your country you can probably get away with using pictures of their products for a short-time experiment without permission. You can probably get away with it even if they do operate in your country. Odds are you are not worth them suing. However, if you want to play it safe I'll second Elmar's response.
P.S. One of my neighbors has her own health spa and she used a bunch of celebrity (who had absolutely no connection to her spa) photos in her newspaper ads. As the celebs complained their pictures were removed from the ads. Apparently the last one to complain was Jennifer Aniston. Semi interesting addition to this story - the spa owner's husband is an attorney.
Yes you can. However, with the permission of the relevant company
I think it's fine if you just show the pictures briefly and neutrally and the study lasts for only a short period of time as James suggested. Also if you use a private site and all the participants access it by invitation, then it should be okay.
However, it's a different story if it's a video and you are going to post on public domain like Youtube or others. Then you will definitely have to seek permission from the company. I have gone through a lengthy process for sorting out the copyright issue with Sony for using a short extract of its video in my experiment.
It is also relevant if you use pictures you took yourself or photos from the internet (with no copyrights). In the first case, and if the study is not done for commercial reasons, I do not see why you should get into trouble.
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