International and methodological diversity in advertising research

This is the second special issue of the International Journal of Advertising presenting various papers from the International Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA). This issue contains a selection of papers from the 2016 ICORIA presentations in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The European Advertising Academy (EAA), the organization that holds the annual ICORIA conferences, seeks to strengthen the professional foundation of those involved in advertising research. Over the years, the EAA and the International Journal of Advertising have established and maintained a fruitful relationship inspired by the shared interest in advertising research and commitment towards an international advertising community. The International Journal of Advertising is recognized as a truly international journal for at least two main reasons. First, it publishes more international advertising research articles than any other advertising journal (Khang et al. 2016). Second, it is the most globally inclusive and diverse advertising journal in terms of authors’ nationalities and author teams (Polonsky and Carlson 2009; West 2007). International diversity of academic author teams can benefit research because the researchers from a single country profit from the enhanced knowledge, theoretical and methodological skills, and language proficiency supplied by those from other countries (Van Rijnsoever and Hessels 2011). Diversity of authorship broadens the practical and theoretical perspectives and views on a topic, thereby increasing theory and knowledge development. Interestingly, diversity of authorship in advertising positively relates to article citations and therefore to research performance (Eisend 2017). International diversity in research is important not only for broadening our knowledge perspectives but also for its role in increasing methodological diversity in research and, thus, in the generalizability of our empirical knowledge. The generalizability of empirical knowledge – that is, whether empirical findings can be transferred to other contexts, situations or people – is a cornerstone for developing successful theories, defined as theories that prevail in various empirical contexts (Hunt 2012). Most of our advertising theories were developed and originally tested in Western contexts, but the increasing globalization of scholarship has encouraged researchers to question whether Western theories are valid and generalizable across the globe or are contingent on cultural contexts (Burgess and Steenkamp 2006; Steenkamp 2005). One of the most popular theories in advertising research, the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), was developed in a Western context. Although the theory has been applied and successfully tested in many different contexts over the years, a recent study tried to replicate the seminal ELM study by Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann (1983) in three countries: Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (Kerr et al. 2015). The authors failed to replicate most of the findings of the original study. In particular, the interaction effects between involvement, argument strength and endorsement that support either the peripheral or central route processing explanation of the ELM could not be replicated