Designing research with in-built differentiated replication

Replication is central to normal scientific investigation. This fact is widely accepted in business disciplines. However, many researchers are uncertain how to build replication into their own research designs and this may explain why they do not routinely adopt this practice. The purpose of this pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business research Vol. 66; no. 9; pp. 1398 - 1405
Main Authors: Uncles, Mark D., Kwok, Simon
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York Elsevier Inc 01.09.2013
Elsevier
Elsevier Sequoia S.A
Subjects:
Academic disciplines
Behavior
Boundary conditions
Business
Business studies
China
Chinese buyer behavior
Consumer behavior
Consumers
Data matrix
Design
Differentiated replication
Economic research
Empirical generalization
Empirical tests
Generalizations
Matrices
Matrix
Reproducibility
Research design
Research methodology
Researcher subject relations
Researchers
Robustness
Studies
China
Data matrix
Differentiated replication
Empirical generalization
Chinese buyer behavior
ISSN:0148-2963, 1873-7978
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Replication is central to normal scientific investigation. This fact is widely accepted in business disciplines. However, many researchers are uncertain how to build replication into their own research designs and this may explain why they do not routinely adopt this practice. The purpose of this paper is to re-state the importance of replication; assert that replication is an integral component of the initial research design; highlight the special importance of differentiated replication and the use of many sets of data in establishing empirical generalizations; and provide an example offering practical guidance for business researchers. The example concerns the buying behavior of Chinese consumers—a topic of considerable academic and managerial interest because of the growing economic and strategic importance of China. The examples compare empirical findings across multiple dimensions of a pre-specified 240-cell data matrix which consists of content, spatial and temporal dimensions. Findings concerning buyer behavior are consistent across the majority of cells—both the patterns of consumer behavior (scope) and the systematic deviations (indicating potential boundary conditions). The example of replication as an integral component of the original research design establishes the validity of the findings, in terms of their robustness, and signals the importance of replication, which should stimulate further validation by independent researchers.
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ISSN:0148-2963
1873-7978
DOI:10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.05.005