With uniqueness of context, we mean a context that is solitary in type or characteristics and not equal to any other. We consider a context specific when (1) the research findings obtained in studies in that context may be considered to have limited generalizability to other contexts and (2) the limited generalizability of the findings is due to the uniqueness of the context. While environmental factors sometimes can be usefully operationalized as a set of moderators in a study, contexts are difficult, non-sensical, or even impossible to operationalize because: (1) there is no variance across subjects in the extent to which they belong to the context (i.e., the context is equally present for all subjects of the study) and (2) contexts are holistic environments that cannot be usefully broken down into characteristics that can be introduced separately as environmental factors. To clarify what we mean by “context”, we refer to the setting in which a phenomenon is studied. The current paper aims to clarify why and when context-specific studies with limited generalizability (at least, initially) have indeed scientific merit and to provide recommendations to authors and journal stewards on how to develop them (well). We believe that these types of statements reflect a tension between lack of generalizability and scientific merit that is often misunderstood. I suggest that you position less on your context and more on …”. A broadened perspective would increase the potential impact of your research. Such feedback Footnote 1 may (1) dismiss the specific context altogether (e.g., “Why should the readers of a broad-based journal like be concerned about ? Are the topics presented in the research agenda substantially more than an industry-specific version of (say) the MSI research priorities?“) or (2) ask to generalize what is not generalizable (e.g., “Could you argue that is part of a broader array of … arrangements (this would increase the generalizability of your research). Prospective authors of context-specific studies often meet (initial) resistance in the adoption and diffusion of their research (e.g., peer review, impact, conference audiences) as reviewers, readers, and listeners may jump the fence on generalizability. Video games, movies, platform markets, sharing economy, technology, sports, and mobile are other examples where research contributions tend to be highly specific to those contexts.Īt the same time, informal scholarly debate lingers on whether such contributions should be published in major marketing journals because they lack generalizability or address a relatively small (i.e., specialized) audience. An example is the pharmaceutical marketing literature (Gönül et al., 2001 Mantrala et al., 1994 for other representative papers, see below). In some cases, over time, a substantial literature stream has emerged focused on one such specific context. ( 1999) could be applied to other empirical settings. For instance, it is not straightforward to see how the screen allocation model for multi-screen movie theatres of Swami et al. The marketing literature contains quite a few studies focused on contexts that seem to have limited generalizability to others. The present paper aims to (1) provide a more nuanced system of beliefs for marketing scholarship to adopt in favor of specificity (2) offer a helping hand to authors and editors when developing and publishing context-specific studies (3) review successful examples from the prior literature and (4) offer clear implications for scholars. ![]() ![]() Generalizability is excessively heralded as the ideal, and studies in specific contexts are too often denigrated, while both intrinsically can be valuable to the advancement of knowledge. Unfortunately, the generalizability-specificity dilemma is often misunderstood. A firm’s industry-think of pharmaceuticals, video games, movies, platform markets, sharing economy-may represent an unambiguous example of a specific context. A context-specific study is a study in a unique setting yielding conclusions that can be considered to have limited generalizability to other settings. This paper clarifies why context-specific studies have scientific merit and provides recommendations to authors and journal stewards on how to develop them well.
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