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 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.