Replication Research in Marketing Revisited: A Note on a Disturbing Trend

Heiner Evanschitzky, Marketing Center Muenster, Universitat Munster
Carsten Baumgarth, Universitat Siegen
Raymond Hubbard, Drake University
J. Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania

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Postprint version. Published in Journal of Business Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, April 2007, pages 411-415.
Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2006.12.003

Abstract

Over the past decade, researchers have expressed concerns over what seemed to be a paucity of replications. In line with this, editorial policies of some leading marketing journals have been modified to encourage more replications. We conducted an extension of a 1994 study to see whether these efforts have had an effect. In fact, the replication rate has fallen to 1.2 percent, a decrease in the rate by 50%. 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 the findings until they have been replicated, and researchers should put little stock in the outcomes of one-shot studies.