Mecanismos de pago

All of these data sources are analyzed with a holistic approach in order to move from emic perspectives of respondents to make etic interpretations of the Harley Davidson brand community’s meanings and experiences in Turkish

context. I have worked back and forth between these data sources, in order to seek out inconsistencies, differences, and commonalities, and I have dissected every bit of information to create a fuller understanding.

I can explain the analysis process in two categories: a secondary analysis and a primary analysis. The secondary analysis started with my first involvement with the topic. I have started to collect data from various media sources and together with the extant literature this data both paved the way for designing the research and also it helped me to shape and reshape the primary data collection and analysis.

The primary analysis started with the open coding of the data from the verbatim transcripts of the in-depth interviews. This open coding of the data required the careful deep reading of each interview transcript separately without making any premature assumptions about the interconnectedness of codes. After the free coding of each interview I have then looked for themes emerging out of these codes. The themes then were analyzed in order to find any commonalities, or contradictions within each interview. It was at this stage that I have realized that there are contradicting themes in each interview regarding what the respondent believes in and how s/he lives. These themes then were examined across interviews. At this stage I have also started the iterative process of going back and forth between the theoretical literature and the data. Interrelationships between themes were identified and then some of the redundant themes were eliminated. Together with the theory and in light of my research questions I

organized the themes hierarchically and while establishing three themes as chief points of the study I have also eliminated some themes as redundant. The next stage in this primary analysis involved the abstraction of theses from the data.

Together with the literature, secondary sources, and observations I have interpreted the emic themes from respondents into etic theses for building a theoretical understanding from the data.

A final analysis step was for me the writing up stage of the findings. The writing up stage allowed me to critically reflect on my interpretations of the data as a researcher. The writing stage was also important as it was in this stage where I have also discussed the initial writings with fellow researchers and had the opportunity to evaluate the inherent researcher bias and found new perspectives to construct a wholesome theoretical understanding. The process of writing and rewriting and rewriting allowed me to critique myself as a researcher as well as to fine tune the contributions of my research.

My approach in this study was never to uncover a generalizable objective truth, but rather to report a robust interpretation of a triangulated data in order to portray a trustworthy picture of the Harley Davidson brand community in Turkey;

by providing an answer as to what kind of everyday problems this brand community membership resolves for consumers and how, and also by placing it in the global consumptionscape through explaining the ways in which the Harley Davidson brand community has traveled to Turkey. In the next chapter, I will be

discussing the findings from these data sources that will lead the way to portray such a picture.

Table 1. Interviewee Profiles

Name Age Occupation Sex

Toygar 31 Efsane Motor General Manager M

Burhan 36 Travel Agency Owner M

Ahmet 38 Translation Agency Owner M

Metin 38 Stock Broker M

Ziya 56 Athletics Club and Restaurant Owner M

Mesut 56 Real Estate M

Aygun 56 Export – Import M

Yaman 57 Distribution Firm Owner M Turgay 58 Manufacturing Firm Owner M Atay 60 Professor / Firm Owner M

CHAPTER 4

RESULTS

In this chapter I will first talk about the launching story of the first and only Harley Davidson dealership in Turkey. Then I will discuss the Harley Owners Group (HOG) organization and the establishment of the Harley Owners Association (HOA), a legal non-governmental organization founded by the HOG members in Turkey. This section will continue, after explaining the relationships between the dealer and HOG (or HOA),² with the different categories, or as I term them, the subcommunities within the Harley Davidson brand community in Turkey. I will conclude the lived level analysis with the discussion on the personal mythologies of Turkish Harley riders, and how these personal mythologies are acted through the brand community membership. The final section in this chapter will discuss the believed level analysis of the data, where I will show how the Harley Davidson brand community members in Turkey believe, on the contrary to what they live through, that there is a universal brand community among the

2 Respondents use the acronym HOG for their community, unless they would like to explicitely differentiate between the two. Therefore, from here on I will do the same and only refer to the

Harley Davidson owners around the globe. This chapter will be followed by the theoretical implications emanating from these two lived and believed levels of analysis of the data.