[Jdm-society] on the need for replications

[armstrong]

Scientists regard replications as the bedrock of research. 
Researchers in marketing have expressed concerns over what seems to 
be a paucity of replications. Prior research also suggests that the 
situation in marketing is similar to that in other areas of 
management science.

This concern is important because a large percentage of replications 
have failed to support the original findings. Our study shows that 
only between 25% and 44% of replication studies confirmed earlier 
results - a figure that questions the findings in marketing that come 
from one-shot-studies.

In line with these observations, editorial policies of some leading 
marketing journals have been modified to encourage more replications. 
We conducted an extension of a 1994 study see whether these efforts 
have had an effect. In fact, the replication rate has fallen to 1.2 
percent, a decrease in the rate of about half. As things now stand, 
practitioners should be skeptical about using the results published 
in marketing journals as hardly any of them have been successfully 
replicated, teachers are advised to ignore findings until they have 
been replicated, and researchers should put little stock in the 
outcomes of one-shot studies.

This paper, "Replication research's disturbing trend," by 
Evanschitzky, H., C. Baumgarth, R. Hubbard & J. S. Armstrong, Journal 
of Business Research, 60 (2007), 411-415, is available in full-text 
at  http://jscottarmstrong.com

Scott Armstrong


-- 
J. Scott Armstrong
The Wharton School, U. of PA, Phila, PA 19104
http://www.jscottarmstrong.com
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