Guides · Replication and generalization

Publishing a replication in marketing: when editors say yes

Marketing journals rarely publish a plain repeat of an earlier study. Editors are most receptive when the original finding is influential, when the replication tests how far it generalizes or finds a moderator, and when results are reported whatever they show. Replication sections, advertising and B2B journals, short notes and registered reports have all provided routes into print.

How rare replications are in marketing journals

An early content analysis set the baseline. Of 1,120 papers sampled from three major marketing journals, none were replications and only 1.8 percent were extensions, taking 1.1 percent of journal space and appearing on average seven years after the original study. Of the 20 published extensions, 12 conflicted with the original results and only 3 fully confirmed them.^[1]

Replication has long been a small share of what marketing journals print. Content analyses summarized in a 2023 replication paper in the Journal of Advertising Research put replications at under 2 percent of empirical articles in leading marketing journals from 1974 to 2011, and at about 3 percent in major advertising journals from 1980 to 2012.^[2]

The same summary reports that the share of published replications confirming earlier results rose over time, reaching 93 percent in advertising journals. The authors treat that high figure as a possible sign of publication bias against failed replications, not as proof that the original findings were robust.^[2]

Consumer research shows a related pattern. A review of every Journal of Consumer Research article since the journal's founding found that 49 percent of 2,664 articles discussed replication, but mostly authors repeating their own studies inside the same paper. Replications of other researchers' work averaged about 5 percent of articles and showed no upward trend.^[3]

Part of the explanation is incentives. Repetition has been treated as low-prestige work, and credit in science goes mainly to whoever reports a result first, so a replicator gains little recognition whatever the outcome.^[4][5]

Why journals are more open than they were

The large psychology reproducibility project changed the conversation. When 100 published experimental and correlational studies were rerun with high-powered designs and original materials where available, 97 percent of the originals had been significant but only 36 percent of the replications were, and replication effects were on average about half the size of the originals.^[6]

Marketing responded through disclosure rules and dedicated space. Top marketing journals began asking for fuller reporting of instruments, methods and analyses, and in 2012 the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) opened a Replication Corner after its editors observed that no high-status marketing journal was publishing replication attempts, successful or not.^[7]

Psychology journals moved the same way, with several stating that they would publish both failed and successful replications and some creating standing sections for replication reports.^[8]

The first filter is the importance of the original

Editors ration replication space toward findings that matter. The IJRM Replication Corner considered only replications of important papers, and its most common reason for rejection was that the original did not clear that bar, judged by awards and by citations relative to other top-journal papers from the same year.^[7]

Consumer research editors have used comparable criteria: how important the phenomenon is, how novel and influential the specific paper is, and whether there is a concrete reason to suspect the result does not generalize.^[3]

Guidance written for replicators makes the same point from the other side. Not every study deserves a replication, and an effect that already has several close replications is a less urgent target than one that has none.^[8]

Published replications argue for their target explicitly. A Journal of Advertising replication of an online ad-avoidance model cited the original's citation record and pioneering role, a decade of change in ad targeting, the original's small student sample and the absence of evidence from non-Western markets.^[9]

Add something the original could not show

The clearest route to acceptance is a replication that also extends. The IJRM Replication Corner preferred conceptual replications and replications with extensions to attempts at copying the original, because its editors cared more about the scope and limits of an influential finding than about re-auditing its statistics.^[7]

Of the 30 papers that section accepted from 91 submissions, 22 were purely conceptual replications, 12 showed that the original effect was moderated by some factor, and 7 helped resolve an inconsistency in the earlier literature.^[7]

Work on theory building explains why a bare change of setting is weak. Showing that an established model works as expected somewhere new adds little unless there was a reason to expect it to fail there, and showing that it fails adds little unless the paper explains why.^[10]

An editor of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science listed papers that retest known effects or theories in a different context, such as only changing the country or the product, among submissions that often do not reach publication.^[11]

For consumer research, suggested formats include replicate-and-extend papers that add a moderator or mechanism, and non-replication-and-explanation papers that document a failure, identify the factor behind it and revise the theory. Either kind must show that it reduces real uncertainty about an important theory, or it risks being judged incremental.^[3]

Outlets and formats that have published replications

• Replication sections. IJRM ran its Replication Corner from 2012; when an incoming editor ended it because replications tend to be cited less, which hurts impact factors, the Journal of Marketing Behavior agreed to continue it.^[7]
• Short replication notes. The Journal of Marketing Behavior has printed conceptual replications as brief notes handled by a replication editor, for example a six-page replication and extension of the IKEA effect.^[12]
• Advertising journals. The Journal of Advertising has published conceptual replications with mixed or partial results, including three experiments on single-exposure musical conditioning and a French replication of a product-placement study, and the Journal of Advertising Research has published a replication and extension on brands that stop advertising.^[13][14][2]
• B2B journals. Industrial Marketing Management has published a quasi-replication and extension on key account management, and the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing a close replication and extension of a relationship-value framework.^[15][16]
• Registered reports. A working paper on open science in marketing, not yet peer reviewed, notes that IJRM and Psychology and Marketing offer registered reports, where the design is reviewed before data collection and acceptance is granted regardless of the results.^[17]
• Commentaries and letters. Consumer researchers have proposed publishing smaller independent replications as brief commentaries or letters, a format Psychological Science already offers, instead of leaving them on blogs where they are hard to find and easy to dismiss.^[3]

Failed replications can be published, but expect resistance

Replication sections aim to print failures as well as successes. The IJRM editors reported that original authors asked to review a failed replication of their own work were often defensive, and concluded that editors must push back when those authors recommend rejection.^[7]

A failure is easier to publish when it was built to be informative. A Journal of Advertising replication of a classic music-in-advertising effect removed confounds and demand artifacts from the original design, powered each study well above its target and fixed a success criterion in advance. One study found no effect for higher-involvement products, and another found a significant effect that was still reliably smaller than the original.^[13]

Failed conceptual replications are published much less often than failed direct ones, because a critic can blame the new operationalization. Careful pilot testing and strong manipulation checks make that dismissal harder.^[5]

Where independent replication is rare, a non-replication can read as an accusation instead of as more data, which raises the cost of reporting one. Replication editors have argued that a failure is not a mark against the original authors, since both results are data points on an unsolved question, and framing the paper that way helps.^[3][7]

Before you submit

• Show that the original matters with evidence of its influence, such as citations and awards, not assertion.^[7][3]
• Name the paper's type in the title, as published examples do with labels such as conceptual replication and extension, quasi-replication, or replication and extension.^[9][15][2]
• Document how each element of your study compares with the original so reviewers can judge whether deviations were justified; the companion guide on designing a replication covers how.^[8]
• Pool the original and replication estimates in a small meta-analysis, which the IJRM Replication Corner asked authors to include wherever feasible.^[7]
• Match the outlet to the scope: a replication section or note for a focused retest, a full article when the extension carries its own contribution, and a registered report when the design can be fixed before data collection.^[7][3][17]

The evidence behind this

• Marketing knowledge: how it is made and when to trust it
• Research methods pitfalls: ratio variables and censored data
• Empirical generalizations in marketing: what the research shows

References

1. Raymond Hubbard, J. Scott Armstrong (1994). Replications and Extensions in Marketing: Rarely Published But Quite Contrary. International Journal of Research in Marketing.
2. Peilin Phua, Nicole Hartnett, Virginia Beal, Giang Trinh, Rachel Kennedy (2023). When Brands Go Dark: A Replication and Extension. Journal of Advertising Research.
3. Oleg Urminsky, Berkeley J Dietvorst (2024). Taking the Full Measure: Integrating Replication into Research Practice to Assess Generalizability. Journal of Consumer Research.
4. R. Murray Lindsay, Andrew S. C. Ehrenberg (1993). The Design of Replicated Studies. The American Statistician.
5. Christian S. Crandall, Jeffrey W. Sherman (2016). On the scientific superiority of conceptual replications for scientific progress. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
6. Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science.
7. John Lynch, Eric T. Bradlow, Joel Huber, Donald R. Lehmann (2015). Reflections on the replication corner: In praise of conceptual replications. International Journal of Research in Marketing.
8. Mark J. Brandt, Hans IJzerman, Ap Dijksterhuis, Frank J. Farach, Jason Geller, Roger Giner‐Sorolla, James A. Grange, Marco Perugini, Jeffrey R. Spies, Anna van 't Veer (2013). The Replication Recipe: What makes for a convincing replication?. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
9. Zahra Seyedghorban, Hossein Tahernejad, Margaret Jekanyika Matanda (2015). Reinquiry into Advertising Avoidance on the Internet: A Conceptual Replication and Extension. Journal of Advertising.
10. David A. Whetten (1989). What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 490–495.
11. Robert W. Palmatier (2016). Editorial: the past, present, and future of JAMS. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
12. Marko Sarstedt, Doreen Neubert, Kati Barth (2016). The IKEA Effect: A Conceptual Replication. Journal of Marketing Behavior.
13. Ivar Vermeulen, Camiel J. Beukeboom (2015). Effects of Music in Advertising: Three Experiments Replicating Single-Exposure Musical Conditioning of Consumer Choice (Gorn 1982) in an Individual Setting. Journal of Advertising.
14. Felipe Pantoja, Patrícia Rossi, Adilson Borges (2015). How Product-Plot Integration and Cognitive Load Affect Brand Attitude: A Replication. Journal of Advertising.
15. Dennis Herhausen, Björn Sven Ivens, Robert Spencer, Michael Weibel (2021). Key account management configurations and their effectiveness: A quasi-replication and extension. Industrial Marketing Management.
16. Nektarios Tzempelikos (2020). Relationship value in business-to-business markets: a replication and extension of Ulaga and Eggert’s (2006) study. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing.
17. Lachlan Deer, Susanne Jana Adler, Hannes Datta, Natalie Mizik, Marko Sarstedt (2024). Toward Open Science in Marketing Research.

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