What Marketing Research Can Actually Explain

Marketing AnalyticsEisend, M. · 2015Journal of Marketing
Topicsmeta-analysis·effect size·marketing knowledge·second-order meta-analysis·knowledge accumulation·pricing·consumer behavior

You're deciding how much weight to put on "the research says" when a team pushes back on a plan. Findings from academic marketing research cut against the instinct that marketing evidence is softer than the established social sciences: pooled across the field, marketing explains about as much of market behavior as pooled reviews of psychology explain of theirs. Evidence strength is uneven across topics, though, so the practical question is which areas to lean on and which to test locally before you bet a decision on them.

Marketing research explains about as much of market behavior as psychology does.

A pooling of 176 marketing meta-analyses across eight subject areas puts marketing's average predictive power on par with, or slightly ahead of, long-established fields like psychology and social psychology. The strength is uneven by topic: pricing and consumer-behavior findings are the strongest, methods and new-product findings the weakest.

Data chart

Some areas of marketing research have stronger evidence than others

Pricing0.361Consumer Behavior0.284All Marketing (average)0.236New Product Development0.203Research Methods0.154

Evidence strength differs sharply by topic, so leaders should trust pricing and consumer-behavior findings more than methods or new-product findings.

Action guide

  1. Give "the research says" the same weight you would give psychology.Marketing evidence explains market behavior about as well as pooled psychology research does, so calibrate your confidence to that level rather than discounting it as a soft science.
  2. Lean hardest on pricing and consumer-behavior findings.Those two areas carry the strongest evidence base of the eight studied.
  3. Treat research-methods and new-product-development findings as more tentative.They carry the weakest evidence of the eight, so pair them with local testing before betting a major decision on them.
  4. Put consumer-behavior evidence on the executive learning agenda.It was the only sub-field whose knowledge base was still improving at the end of the research period through 2012, after an earlier decline, so it is the area whose new findings most deserve senior attention.

Evidence

  • Across a huge pool of marketing studies, the average predictive strength is a moderate one, on par with or slightly stronger than similar pooled reviews in psychology and social psychology.
  • To make that concrete, the research converts the average effect into success rates: acting on the knowledge moves a 50-50 outcome to roughly 62% and not acting to roughly 38%. That is an illustrative reframing of the correlation, not a measured result, and most of what drives any single outcome still sits outside the research.
  • Evidence strength is uneven by topic: pricing research is the strongest, consumer-behavior research is next-strongest, while research methods and new-product development are the weakest.
  • Marketing's overall knowledge base has grown over time but is now leveling off, consistent with a maturing field rather than one still accelerating.
  • Consumer behavior is the one area still gaining strength today, after an earlier dip. Every other area is flat, declining, or already leveled off.
  • The longer a specific topic has been studied, the weaker its newest findings tend to be, consistent with well-studied topics having fewer big discoveries left to make.
  • Studies with stronger findings tend to get cited more, suggesting the research community already treats stronger effect sizes as more valuable.

Key takeaway

Pooled across the field, marketing research explains about as much of market behavior as long-established social sciences do.

Source

Eisend, M. (2015). Have we progressed marketing knowledge? A meta-meta-analysis of effect sizes in marketing research. Journal of Marketing, 79(3), 23–40. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.14.0288

Read the paper ↗

Evidence strength: Strong. The study pools 176 marketing meta-analyses (1,841 effect sizes from more than 7,500 primary studies, 1918-2012); it measures how much marketing research as a body of knowledge explains market behavior, not the financial return or ROI of any specific marketing action. The slowdown trend covers growth through 2012 only, with no projection beyond that period.