{
  "study": "comparative-positioning",
  "version": 1,
  "question": "Can truthful comparative information change the criteria simulated buyers weigh, and with them their choice between two competing products, and does the same positioning strategy backfire where the competitor is actually stronger on the emphasised feature?",
  "fiction": "Every company, product, laboratory and person here is fictional and exists only in this simulation. No real product is compared.",
  "ours": "Halvard Historian",
  "theirs": "Corvel Stream",
  "worlds": {
    "baseline": {"description": "Halvard is faster on the emphasised feature (query latency); Corvel has more connectors and costs more.",
                 "latency": {"Halvard Historian": 0.4, "Corvel Stream": 1.9}},
    "reversed": {"description": "Counterfactual: Corvel is faster on the emphasised feature; everything else is unchanged.",
                 "latency": {"Halvard Historian": 1.9, "Corvel Stream": 0.4}}
  },
  "products": {
    "Halvard Historian": {"vendor": "Halvard Data", "connectors": 46, "price": 19000,
      "page": "Halvard Historian (by Halvard Data)\nPlant time-series historian for process and discrete manufacturing.\n- Query latency: {latency} s at p95 for a 30-day trend over 10,000 tags (vendor-measured)\n- Native connectors: 46 PLC, SCADA and MES systems; others through OPC UA\n- Price: $19,000 per site per year, unlimited users\n- Deployment: on-premises or private cloud; 99.9% uptime commitment\n- Support: 24x7 phone for production-down issues"},
    "Corvel Stream": {"vendor": "Corvel Systems", "connectors": 140, "price": 26000,
      "page": "Corvel Stream (by Corvel Systems)\nPlant time-series historian for process and discrete manufacturing.\n- Query latency: {latency} s at p95 for a 30-day trend over 10,000 tags (vendor-measured)\n- Native connectors: 140 PLC, SCADA and MES systems; others through OPC UA\n- Price: $26,000 per site per year, unlimited users\n- Deployment: on-premises or private cloud; 99.9% uptime commitment\n- Support: 24x7 phone for production-down issues"}
  },
  "exposures": {
    "none": "A week later you come back to the decision. You have seen nothing new about either product since.",
    "benchmark": "A week later, before deciding, you read a comparison published by Fennick Test Lab, an independent testing laboratory paid by neither vendor. It ran both products on the same hardware with the same 10,000-tag dataset (method published; tested October 2026):\n- p95 latency, 30-day trend query: Halvard Historian {lat_ours} s; Corvel Stream {lat_theirs} s\n- Native connectors: Halvard Historian 46; Corvel Stream 140\n- List price per site per year: Halvard Historian $19,000; Corvel Stream $26,000\nThe report makes no recommendation.",
    "campaign": "A week later, before deciding, you receive this message from Halvard Data:\n\"Query latency is what your operators feel every shift. When a trend takes seconds to draw, people stop looking. Halvard Historian returns a 30-day trend over 10,000 tags in {lat_ours} s at p95 on our reference hardware (method on request). Ask every vendor you are considering for the same number before you decide.\""
  },
  "arms": ["none", "benchmark", "campaign"],
  "options": ["Halvard Historian", "Corvel Stream", "Defer the decision"],
  "criteria": ["query latency", "connector coverage", "price", "support and uptime", "other"],
  "population": {
    "strata": {"need": ["latency", "connectors", "budget"]},
    "sample": {
      "name": {"choice": ["Ana Ferreira", "Ben Okoro", "Clara Weiss", "Deepak Rao", "Eva Novak", "Farid Aziz", "Gwen Morgan", "Hugo Larsen", "Iris Tan", "Jonas Berg", "Kemi Adeyemi", "Luis Ortega", "Mei Chen", "Nils Eriksen", "Olga Ivanova", "Pedro Alves"]},
      "role": {"choice": ["OT architect", "plant IT manager", "reliability engineer", "operations director"]},
      "industry": {"choice": ["specialty chemicals", "food processing", "pulp and paper", "electronics assembly", "cement", "water utility"]},
      "sites": {"choice": [1, 2, 3, 5]},
      "incumbent": {"choice": ["spreadsheets and a legacy historian being retired", "a trial licence of Corvel Stream that expires next month", "a trial licence of Halvard Historian that expires next month"]}
    }
  },
  "needs": {
    "latency": "Your operators run ad-hoc trend queries throughout every shift, and slow trend screens have been their main complaint about the old system.",
    "connectors": "Your plants run equipment from about thirty different PLC and SCADA vendors, and every system you leave unconnected means custom integration work.",
    "budget": "Your capital and software budget for this year is tight, and finance will question anything above the cheaper option without a clear reason."
  },
  "persona": "You are {name}, {role} at a {industry} company, choosing a plant data historian for {sites} site(s). {need_text} Your current setup: {incumbent}.",
  "system": "You are role-playing the buyer described below in a fictional market simulation. Every company, laboratory and product is fictional. Respond as this person plausibly would, using only what you have been shown and your own background. Reply with one JSON object only.",
  "seeds": {"pilot": [1], "final": [21, 22, 23]},
  "buyers_per_seed": {"pilot": 6, "final": 60},
  "budget": {"model_calls_max": 3000, "note": "per buyer and world: 1 shared pre-exposure prompt per track (asked once, the same in every arm) and 1 post-exposure prompt per arm per track; 60 buyers x 3 seeds x 2 worlds x (2 + 6) = 2,880."}
}