Discussion guide for in-depth interviews

The interview guide was the research tool for this phase of the project. It was designed by using the main constructs coming from the existing literature and previous research conducted in this area of consumer behaviour studies (Hinkle, 1965). Techniques of laddering up or down are best applied for explaining subordinate and superordinate constructs and their relationships (Cohen et al., 2007) providing analytical methods through the interviewing process to obtain meaning from the collected responses. Reynolds and Gutman describe the laddering technique as “a tailored interviewing format using primarily a series of direct probes” (1988,

p.12). As suggested, this technique is a useful tool for in-depth interviewing and inquiry in qualitative studies.

The discussion guide was created to test the key questions used in the following stage of the research to identify the information search processes that consumers undertake prior to purchasing products (Miller and Glassner, 2004). The discussion guide was semi-structured and used the laddering method as a form of recursive questioning (Neimeyer et al., 2001). Neimeyer et al. (2001, p.99) suggest that the best way to start using this technique is to select a starting point “that permits the development of clear constructs”. In accordance with this recommendation the discussion guide for the qualitative part of the research project utilised online shopping and digital technology products as an introduction to the superordinate themes of user created content and word of mouth practices that followed. The themes of the discussion guide had the following structure (the full version is available in Appendix V):

 Introduction

 Shopping habits and purchasing occurrence within the past 30 days

 Retailing channels, personal preferences

 Online searching paths

 Searching habits and practices

 User created content

 Types of user created content

 Preferred formats

 Websites visited

 Use of information – sources

 Word of mouth

 Word of mouth practices

 The role in dissemination of word of mouth

 Positive and negative word of mouth

 Opinion leaders

 General

 Participation

 Trust

 Reputation

 Reliability of user created content

 Summary of key points

 Discussing significant themes and prompting

 Returning to red flagged topics

 Clarifying issues

 Wrapping up

 Ending the interviewing session

This simplified map of the discussion guide delivers the main topics but does not communicate its complexity; for more detail see the full version of the discussion guide in Appendix V. It is important to say that some questions included in the discussion guide were later extended and used in the questionnaire for the next phase of the research project. The final design of the questionnaire for the quantitative study was adapted according to the qualitative findings, and adjusted in order to fit the online survey format. Some sections were adjusted to be in the context of the collected responses (Dane, 1990), accordingly some questions were added or deducted, or their order was changed.

A semi-structured discussion guide, show cards and 10-point Likert scale were used as research instruments during the interviews to help respondents provide metric values. Plowright (2011) argues that both types of data – numerical and narrative – can be collected using the same data collection method, while the numerical data was considered to be an unambiguous and more dexterous type of information than it was descriptive. The show-cards were found to be useful not only as a visual aid for lists of tested items, but also in providing precise values when describing personal sentiments and attitudes (show-card with 10-point Likert scale). The argument was that with the use of fixed formats that lead respondents to select one of the offered options (in this case evaluation by using a 10-point scale) the format ‘open question/closed answer’ (Galtung 1967 in Gobo, 2011) was preferred over the ‘fixed question/free answers technique’ (Likert in Gobo, 2011), mainly because the response time was shorter, as the scale provided a more measurable toll for respondents’ attitudes. However, the opposite was the case with loosening the format throughout the interview (semi-structured format), as they turned into conversations, allowing the format to become flexible and information rich.

The interviews were of medium structure (Biber and Leavy, 2011) with some variations in the order of questions and different approaches for different types of consumers. The length of interviews varied from 30-60 minutes, with the average duration of 45 minutes. The respondents were recruited as a purposeful sample (Patton, 1990), while several steps were taken to provide an equal spread across different consumer groups throughout the recruitment phase. As Patton suggests, the reason for using purposeful random sampling is “credibility, not representativeness”

(p.180). To facilitate this sampling technique, respondents with previous online shopping experiences and familiarity with types of user created content (Biber and Leavy, 2011) were recruited in order to assure the richness of collected data.

The respondents were recruited and classified according to their age, gender and profession, and were screened for their online shopping activities, for purposeful sampling and as information-rich cases (Patton, 2002, p.169). Information-rich respondents or active participants (Holstein and Gubrium, 2004, p.150) are those that provide a wealth of information about relevant issues and research topics. There were no particular requirements for participation eligibility (type of products or frequency of purchasing), however the screening question probed for online purchases that had been conducted in the past 30 days, asking about the types of products purchased online in the past two years. Frequent shopping activities indicated that if the respondent was spending time online to search for products, this action will most probably lead to purchases using the same medium (Shim et al., 2001). Hence, it was proposed that these consumers that used social media websites to read product reviews and ratings were more likely to shop online. More so than consumers that used traditional media, or those that were getting information about products through shop assistants.