MAIN STUDY

4.6.1 Objectives

This stage of the study involved the main research activity designed to obtain the data needed to empirically validate the proposed model, and to answer the research questions and achieve the research objectives. The study involved the distribution of self-administered questionnaires to anonymous respondents who comprised the sample population. The sample asked to participate as research respondents was derived from this population through the use of a sampling frame, which is explained in the following section.

4.6.2 Populations and sample structure

Indonesian mobile and fixed phone consumers over 18 years of age were determined to be the target population for this research because wireless broadband services are utilised by consumers who use mobile and fixed telephones. The criteria for inclusion in the study were as follows:

 The respondents had to be Indonesian citizens.

 The respondents had to come from the AB SES (Social Economic Status) category of those with a minimum monthly household spending of 200 dollars and who were located in Greater Jakarta or Bandung.

 The respondents had to be aged between 18 and 55 years (based on Indonesian law, a consumer has to be aged 18 years or over to have accessibility to mobile services information and their availability).

 The respondents were required to not be users of mobile broadband technology and services but had been exposed to information about this technology.

 The respondents had to own cellular devices that support mobile service applications.

 The respondents needed to consent to participate in the survey.

4.6.3 Location and Procedure of Survey

To obtain an adequate response rate through the questionnaires, all possible data collection methods were first identified. They were reviewed to identify the most applicable and effective methods for the Indonesian context. A low response rate is a common problem faced by researchers when conducting data collection in Indonesia. Indonesian consumers are not easily persuaded to participate in surveys. Most believe that surveys are designed by companies for commercial purposes as a marketing tool aimed at convincing them to buy the company’s products. Indonesian consumers are also reluctant to return mailed questionnaires because they do not want their personal information to be disclosed and commercially used by other parties at a later time. Therefore, of all the options, including a postal survey, online surveys and email, personal interviews were deemed to be the most effective method, particularly in terms of avoiding a low response rate, the complexity of the topic and participant concerns around anonymity. With personal interviews, it can be explained to participants that the surveys are purely for academic purposes, and responses can be directly obtained. Thus, questionnaires were distributed to anonymous respondents in the Greater Jakarta and Bandung cities. Jakarta was chosen as the most suitable city in which to conduct the survey because it is an area where the greatest number of potential consumers of wireless broadband services may be randomly found in Indonesia. Bandung was also selected because of its proximity to Jakarta, thus providing a good comparison to Jakarta. In addition, a considerable number of mobile phone users live in both cities. The survey was conducted in major internet wireless equipped malls, electronic and mobile phone shops located in Bandung, and eight suburbs of Jakarta including Tangerang, Central Jakarta, East Jakarta, South Jakarta, West Jakarta, Bogor, Bekasi and North Jakarta.

An area sampling with proportional sample technique was employed to determine the sampling frame. This is a non-probabilistic sampling technique in which samples are taken from pre-determined areas and the sample size is generated proportionally based on the demand profile in those areas (see Table 4.12). For this purpose, data on potential mobile broadband service demand produced by the Indonesian national Telkom-Indonesia (2009) were used. This technique was further implemented by adopting the shopping mall

intercept method in which a systematic random sampling technique was applied to determine potential participants for our study. Potential respondents who had just visited an electronics shop and had the available mobile broadband service explained to them or been offered a free trial of ‘hot spot’ facility at the mall, but had not decided to subscribe to a service provider, were approached and asked to participate in the study. If they consented they then completed the questionnaire.

TABLE 4.11 AREA SAMPLING AND PROPORTIONAL SAMPLE METHOD

Source: Telkom-Indonesia (2009)

The survey was conducted between July and October 2009, which resulted in 704 respondents yielding a response rate of 55%. The breakdown of the locations and respondents is shown in Table 4.12 below. The non-response bias was not deemed to be an issue that could influence the results in this study because the respondents were randomly selected for the interview. The tests and comparisons with non-respondents were not conducted because the characteristics and information about non-respondents were not collected, as they did not belong to the scope of this thesis. By addressing the fact that data used in this thesis was obtained through the same questionnaires in that period of time, one could ask a question about how this thesis tackled the issue of common method variance (CMV). To provide information on such a question we visited the CMV definition proposed by Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee and Podsakoff (2003) as referred to by Chang, Witteloostuijn and Eden (2010). Podsakoff et al. (2003) defined

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CMV as “variance that is attributable to the measurement method rather than to the construct the measures represent which could create a false internal consistency, that is, an apparent correlation among variables generated by their common source”. The presence of a substantial amount of common method variance can be detected by implementing Harman’s single factor test for common method variance (Malhotra et al.

2004). Based on this test, exploratory factor analysis was applied to research variables and the results were used to identify the presence of common method variance. When a substantial amount of CMV is in evidence, either a single factor will emerge from the factor analysis or one general factor will account for the majority of the covariance among the variables (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). Practically, we can detect whether CMV is substantially responsible for the relationships among variables by confirming that the one-factor CFA model fits the data satisone-factorily. The results of one-factor analysis conducted in this study revealed multiple distinct factors, rather than a single factor, accounted for the majority of the variance. As a result, the possibility of CMV was not indicated, suggesting that CMV was not an issue potentially influencing the outcome of data analysis.

TABLE 4.12 LOCATIONS AND NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS

No Location Number of respondents

1 Tangerang 57

2 Central Jakarta 28

3 East Jakarta 107

4 South Jakarta 97

5 West Jakarta 86

6 Bogor 45

7 Bekasi 99

8 North Jakarta 43

9 West Bandung 22

10 East Bandung 26

11 North Bandung 22

12 Central Bandung 30

13 South Bandung 42

T o t a l 704

In total, 13 locations were surveyed yielding the 704 usable responses with the highest number of respondents drawn from East Jakarta (107), followed by Bekasi (99) and South Jakarta (97).

4.6.4 Demographic profile of respondents

The demographic profiles of the 704 respondents who participated in the survey are presented in Figure 4.12.

It can be seen from Figure 4.12 that 53.1% of the respondents were male and 46%

female. Those aged 18–24 years formed the largest age group of respondents (48.5%), followed by the age group 25–34 years (37.8%), 35–44 years (12.2%) and 45–55 years (1.4%). The majority of respondents (53.8%) had completed secondary education, many more than those who had a diploma (18.9%) or an undergraduate university education (27.2%). The types of occupation held by the respondents varied widely. Most (52%) worked for a company or an organisation at the time the survey was conducted. The second-largest occupation group of the respondents were students (21.6%), followed by entrepreneurs (11.4%), professionals (2.1%) and lecturers or teachers (0.7%). All respondents who had other occupations were grouped into the ‘other’ category, which accounted for 12.2% of the total sample population.

FIGURE 4.12 DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF SURVEY RESPONDENTS