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4.8.1 Implications from pilot interview guide:

The results of pilot interview guide suggest that it is more appropriate to use 4P’c for primary data analysis. Initially it was suggested to select specific marketing mix element where the network influences more vigilantly or are apparent such as selecting price standardisation/adaptation only and exploring how dyadic interaction between actors and SMEs influence price standardisation/adaptation.

The following are the major implications of pilot interview guide:

4.8.2 Changes in research questions

The research questions are merged in one broad question based on the pilot case study findings:

Question 1: How business networks influence SMEs from Pakistan to develop their marketing programs internationally along Standardisation/adaptation continuum?

Based on pilot studies for interview guide, the research questions are further modified and this broad research question is further explored through sub-questions:

Question 1.1: What are the actors in business network of B2B SMEs in Pakistan which potentially influence marketing decisions of SMEs?

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Question1.2: How actors in networks interact with focal firm to influence on SMEs activities of international marketing decision along standardisation/adaptation continuum?

Sub-question: How network characteristics or relational factors such as trust, commitment, power and dependency and social ties interacting in business network re with actors influence standardisation/adaptation decision of marketing programs for international markets?

Sub-question: Do non-relational factors such as the nature of the product, size of the firm and nature of the industry have any impact on standardisation/adaptation decisions of SMEs?

4.8.3 Changes in interview guide

Based on pilot analyses the following major changes were made in the final interview guide:

 SMEs itself is the part of the network and should be added as the ‘focal firm’ in the interview guide.

 Customers emerged as the most influential ‘Actors’ in dyad relationship for business networks therefore questions should be added for customers as well , to explore their perspective on research topic..

 Geographical proximity/distance have direct influence on standardisation/adaptation of marketing mix element for international markets but as these are not the ‘relational factors’ such as trust or commitment and are more structural aspects of business networks, adding geographical proximity/distance in the research agenda was reconsidered and later removed from the initial interview guide.

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 This research aims to find the influence of actors on strategic decisions in dyad or triad relationship with focal firms. Embeddedness of actors in business networks should be reconsidered as it is not the ‘relational factor’ in business network.

 It’s been observed that, none of sample SMEs had subsidiaries in international markets. When I asked them ‘Why your firm does not have subsidiaries in the international markets? The answer was ‘As we are small manufacturing firms, to open and run a subsidiary requires more capital investment which at this stage of business we cannot afford. If considered the subsidiaries of these SMEs and head office for research, then it would rather focus on control issues and centralised or decentralised decisions (Solberg, 2000). These were again not the main focus of our research. To keep this ‘subsidiary’ factor in the interview guide were reconsidered and were removed from the final interview guide.

 New questions were added to interview guide, such as those related to trust and commitment, social ties, and power and dependency between the actors and local firm.

 Power and dependency in business networks and control issues (Hakansson and Ford, 2002), seemed having influence on strategic choices of SMEs as potential moderating factors such as standardization/adaptation . These were considered to be added to the interview guide.

 Clustering of firms in local business networks was reconsidered as structural characteristic of business networks and therefore, was not included in the in final interview guide.

 Certain questions in initial interview guide leaded to the social ties in business networks influencing strategic decision of B2B SMEs along with the strong evidence of existence of strong or weak social ties from the literature review,

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therefore , related questions were added for social ties as ‘relational factors’ in dyadic or triad relations in business networks (Anderson et al., 1994) .

4.8.4 Firming up population

4.8.5 High-tech verses low-tech SMEs

Pilot analysis for developing interview guide aids to firm up the sample population. The results across the pilot analysis show the differences in standardisation/adaptation decisions for high-tech SMEs verses low-tech SMEs. The patterns emerging during the analysis of pilot analysis suggest that high-tech SMEs such as PC3 are slightly different in decision making processes and the resources they own. Therefore, some of the standardisation/adaptation decisions for marketing mix elements were different from the other pilot analysis of SMEs with low-tech profiles such as leather textile garments industries, food industry or sports industry. Therefore it was concluded to include only low-tech SMEs due to replication issues in analysis, as the international marketing decisions of high-tech SMEs cannot be replicated with the decision of low- tech SMEs.

More importantly, this research focuses on relational and non-relational factors in business networks rather high-tech verses low-tech SMEs. In addition to this argument, the technological intensity of SMEs may also result in distinct standardisation/adaptation decisions which would have a trivial impact on relational or non-relational factors in business networks. Therefore, for primary data, the sample is based on low-tech SMEs across four industries to compare and contrast the results across industries and to generalise the results. The banks were excluded from final interview guide as found having no significant impact on marketing decisions of firms internationally.

170 4.8.6 Changes in conceptual framework

Primarily, based on the literature review, the conceptual framework was developed considering the ARA model approach. The primary case studies findings manifest the relationship factors as moderating factors such as trust, commitment, power and dependency and social ties which may influence the standardisation/adaptation of SMEs. Considering the fact that the ARA network approach lacks the behavioural aspects, interaction approach (Håkansson and Group, 1982:32) is used as foundation for understanding the networks in business to business setting for SMEs in Pakistan. The actors are considered as intervening factors for exploring SMEs decisions for standardisation/adaptation of marketing programs. Relationship factors such as trust, commitment, social ties and power and dependency emerged as major moderating factors in conceptual framework from pilot case analyses. The conceptual framework is further modified by basing itself on the robust findings from across all four pilot cases.

4.8.7 Changes in coding for Nvivo analysis

Based on primary case studies findings new codes were added such as under the parent node ‘moderating factors’ the child nodes were added such as trust , commitment, power and dependency and social ties. Node named ‘social ties’ was further divided into formal ties, informal ties, strong ties, weak ties etc. Some nodes which potentially could be considered as moderating factors such as confidence between two nodes in network, secrecy issues, and long-term relationship verses short-term relationships were also added in the existing list of codes for Nvivo analysis.

171 4.8.8 Addition to the literature streams

After testing interview guide questions, the literature was extended from international marketing decisions such as standardisation/adaptation and business networks relations to relationship marketing variables such as trust, commitment, social ties and power and dependency within the context business to business relations of actors with SMEs.