Centro di Formazione Professionale ‘Nuova Fontana’ (Italia)

Due to access limitations, six interviews were conducted on a face-to-face basis and 24 via telephone, which is a method that has been previously adopted for Canadian SME research (Tiessen et al., 2001). Both methods enabled probing questions to be asked in order to maximise data richness (Ashworth, 2008). Personal demographic data was not collected for any of the interviewees as the pilot study showed key informant and consumer reluctance to reveal detailed personal facts beyond work-oriented or research information. Tiessen et al. (2001) advocates ‘grand-tour’ questions, which were utilised in this thesis, based on over- arching themes in the main study interview guide. This enabled key themes to be probed and meanings explored, elaborated on and clarified. Note taking was also carried out throughout the interviews. This allowed prompt recapping and any queries to be dealt with during the interview. Stake (1995) and Warren (2002) argue that interviews are best conducted at the source; however, comparable data richness was achieved via telephone interviews in this research. Both face-to-face and telephone interviews lasted around one hour, although the longest interviews lasted for over 90 minutes.

The stage interview process utilised for preparation of this thesis, which incorporates access, cracking the e-retail code, the presentation style of the interviewer, rapport, data collection strategy and outcomes, is summarised in Figure 3.3.

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Figure 3.3 Interview Process

Source: Adapted from Ashworth (2005) 3.9.1 In-depth Interview Rationale

In-depth interviews are a significant source of evidence used in this research as they are ‘one of the most powerful techniques in qualitative methodology’ and a significant research tool with the capability of deriving ‘shared meanings’ (McCracken, 1988: 7). In-depth interviews are also considered to be the ‘best method of gathering (detailed) information’ (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002: 86) and are one of the ‘most common and powerful ways’ by which to ‘understand’ (Fontana and Frey, 2000: 645). By adopting a guided interview approach, the in-depth method also has the advantage that issues are framed by participants. McCracken (1988, p 12) highlights that that the in-depth approach to an interview strategy is designed to ‘take advantage of the opportunity for insight and minimise the dangers of familiarity’. However, a key concern for in-depth research is that individuals lead ‘hectic, deeply segmented and privacy-centred lives, even the most willing have only limited time and attention to give’ (McCracken, 1988: 10). Consequently, ‘time scarcity and concern for privacy, stand as important impediments to the qualitative study of modern life’ (McCracken, 1988: 11), and this was also the case when interviewing key informants and consumers. As a result, interview times were coordinated at convenient times for all participants. The rationale for utilising the

118 in-depth interview method in social construction research is advocated by Fontana and Frey (2000: 646), who suggest that interviews act as active interactions that lead to contextually- based results, which are, unlike other forms of social research, able to reveal both the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of business or e-SME life. Furthermore, they assume that interviewing can result in a true and accurate reflection of the research area. In-depth interviews also allow the researcher to ‘achieve qualitative objectives within a manageable methodological context’ (McCracken, 1988: 11). Recommendations in qualitative interviewing necessitate that there be a focus on the voices of the interview participants (Fontana and Frey, 2000) as a way of ensuring rich, quality data and enhanced understanding of topics under investigation (Gummesson, 2005), effectively framing the interview as an emergent process, which is the stance utilised in this thesis.

3.9.2 Screening Interviews

Screening interviews were typically conducted via telephone and email communications with the key informants and consumer interviewees. Screening calls/emails enabled the author to further understand the interviewees background and if they met the sampling criteria. Once interviewees agreed to participate, interviews were scheduled at an appropriate time to fit participant commitments.

3.9.3 Elicitation, Probing and Laddering

Johnson and Weller (2002) state that elicitation and probing allow interviewees to report ‘with some degree of accuracy, perceptions, judgements, decisions’ and ‘particular areas of experience’ (Johnson and Weller, 2002: 492). From a social constructionist perspective, elicitation techniques have an exploratory emergent character implicit in the process of revealing tacit or subjective understandings (Ashworth, 2008). Consequently, interview guidelines were composed, yet remained open and flexible, to accommodate new phenomena and exploration of themes and constructs arising from the literature and to allow interviews to flow (Tesch, 1994), which helped information elicitation relevant to the research questions (Lewis, 2004). Elicitation techniques are used in the context of this research to ‘aid in expert knowledge acquisition through the identification of explanations of domain processes’ (Johnson and Weller, 2002: 492) as well as gain valuable consumer insights. Indeed, Silverman (1997) states that a key advantage of this method is that utilising open questions allowed interviewees to speak freely about complex issues, which would have been difficult to determine from a closed-questionnaire approach. This also allowed respondents to determine their own responses, so not limiting possible responses (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002).

119 Interviews were carried out in accordance with Dick (1998), who recommends commencing the interview in an open-ended way, with more specific questions asked as the interview progresses. The interview techniques undertaken for each interview included clarification, feedback (without leading the interviewee) and probing. This approach ensured that questions and answers were understood, participants were encouraged to share experiences and deeper meanings were investigated via ‘laddering’ to provide full, rich and comprehensive data for analysis (Bryman and Bell, 2007). Laddering ‘enables the researcher to understand an individual’s construct system’ (Bryman and Bell, 2007: 431), where ‘laddering up’ provides information as to why a particular aspect is important and ‘laddering down’ explores the effect of perceptions. For example, consumer interviewees were asked what motivated them to engage with e-SME brands on social media and which aspects developed trust. As a result, interview protocols for the key informant and consumer interviews were also constructed and are available in Appendices 3 and 4.

3.9.4 Adopting Telephone Interview Research for Long Interviews

Distinctive in this thesis is the use of the telephone to conduct ‘long interviews’ (i.e. over 20 minutes’ duration). According to Wenger (2002), telephone interviewing relates to short interviews that usually last half the duration of face-face interviews, never exceed 30 minutes and result in limited data. However, this research utilised telephone interviewing to conduct in-depth interviews lasting generally one hour. This was a useful strategy for accessing time- constrained participants (Tausig and Freeman, 1988) and enabled data to be generated with comparable richness to that generated from face-to-face encounters. However, telephone interviewing does not enable the researcher to observe participant body language. Nevertheless, this is balanced by effective listening acknowledged in this thesis. This enabled aspects of conversations involving pause and intonation to be probed in order to understand appropriate emphases and meanings regarding pertinent issues. The rationale for the largely telephone-based approach was due to the time constraints of the individual key informants and consumers, in accordance with Tausig and Freeman (1988), and resulted in rich qualitative data being provided. This offered an effective approach for gaining rich insights into the perceptions of key informants and consumers.