Since the replicability crisis of social science research appeared in academic circles, scholars have explored its causes in many ways. From the perspective of research methods, the inability to replicate the crisis is related to researchers’ heavy reliance on a single research method. Therefore, multi-method research began to attract the attention of management scholars. Among the common management research methods, the second-hand data method has advantages in the traceability and authenticity of data sources. Using second-hand data to carry out multi-method research can effectively improve the external validity and replicability of research conclusions. Taking the field of consumer behavior as an example, the bibliometric analysis shows that the use of multiple methods, especially the use of secondary data sub-study, has become a research trend. This important trend indicates important changes in the use of methods in management research in the future. However, management scholars in China do not use secondary data sub-study very frequently. Up to now, no scholars have systematically introduced multi-method research and how to use second-hand data to carry out multi-method research. To address this research gap, this paper uses the literature in the field of consumer behavior as the research sample. It first answers the question of how to implement the secondary data method as multi-method research, and further explains how to use the secondary data to carry out multi-method research in the empirical research of management.

Taking 213 articles (197 in English and 16 in Chinese) published in more than 10 domestic and foreign management journals (e.g., JCR and Management World from January 2015 to June 2022 that carried out secondary data sub-study in the field of consumer behavior) as the research sample, this paper first summarizes the advantages and challenges of using secondary data method for management research. Subsequently, this paper systematically introduces the operation process of secondary data sub-study. Finally, this paper answers a series of questions that management scholars may encounter while carrying out multi-method research with the help of secondary data.

This paper makes several contributions to the literature: First, to the best of our knowledge, it is among the first to systematically introduce the secondary data sub-study in the empirical research of management. Second, it clearly tells the difference between secondary data sub-study and general secondary data research, thereby providing original thoughts on how to conduct secondary data sub-study for management scholars. Third, it introduces the specific application and development suggestions of secondary data sub-study in multi-method research in detail. By doing so, this paper can encourage more domestic scholars to pay attention to and use secondary data sub-study while doing management-related research.