Empirical generalisation

An empirical generalisation is a pattern that keeps repeating in data across categories, countries and periods, even before the explaining theory is settled. It is the building block of marketing science as this curriculum practises it: first establish what happens systematically, only then theorise about why. Double jeopardy and the patterns in buying data are the textbook examples. Its status is precisely bounded: stronger than a single-study finding, weaker than a law of nature; every generalisation has boundary conditions within which it holds. This is also the yardstick behind the epistemic label wet in this register.

Covered in