Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

 I chose a research paper called ”Simpatico in store retailing: How immigrant Hispanic emic interpret U.S. store atmorpherics and interations with sales associates” by D.Fowler, S.Wesley, M.Vazquez, 2006.

The article was published in Journal of Business.

The article explores the experiences of Hispanic consumers (shoppers) in the U.S. The areas of focus are those that have recorded the fastest growing Hispanic population throughout the last decades (from 1994- about present). These include states such as: South- and North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas. The people studied were recent immigrants or first generation U.S. citizens of Hispanic decent.

The qualitative method used is “focus groups”. Instead of picking out random people to answer an arbitrary questionnaire, specific people were chosen (on an objective factor basis) and studied with more focus on each individual. After that, the data was collected and analyzed, as usual.

In this case, however, the data was deeper, heavier and less subject to speculation, as the focus groups made each participant elaborate on their answers, leaving very little room for additional interpretation.
I learned that there are more than a few approaches to qualitative research. I chose the article because the method used was different from what I had read earlier. Instead of asking light questions from a large number of people, the authors had gathered random people and interviewed them instead, receiving just as much data but from a completely different perspective. The number of people interviewed in these focus groups is never revealed, leaving a bit too little to trust in the article.
(Since it does provide the reader with a table of percentage of people in categories one could calculate an approximation of the quantity.)

I wouldn’t call it a problem, but rather an improvement of the study would be to continue it on a larger scale, inviting more people to participate in the focus groups and also do the same study with only a simple questionnaire on the side- and then summerizing the findings of the two studies.
In this article the findings were that lots of Hispanics felt poorly treated by customer service because of the language barrier. One parameter that I was more interested in was the influence of the atmorpheric design in retail stores (smell, colour, sound- overall sensory impacts). That was introduced at the beginning of the article but never received further (sufficient)attention.

1. A case study is a qualitative research method strongly based on a selection of previous research. The purpose of qualitative research is to strengthen already existing knowledge , used especially in contemporary environment studies such as social studies.

2. As I had a hard time finding a technical case study article (and I didn’t want to pick up the same article I chose for theme 2- which was a clear study case article) I went ahead and chose a case study article on human behaviour, which I personally find is too often neglected in the technical aspects:

“Behavior and perception of using safety gear among commercial landscapers: A pilot study”; G.Kearney, X.Xu, A.Hight, T.Arcury, Journal od Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 2013

1. The background and reason for the study is described by previously collected  data.
2. A questionnaire was given out to the test subjects that qualified for the study (had sufficient knowledge, education, licenses etc.) based on already existing theories.
3. Even though the selected cases were picked on a quite random basis, they did not vary enough (the instances were a bit limited)- which gave interesting results and made way to new theories and hypotheses at the stage of conclusion- which they acknowledged.

References:

[“Building Theories from Case Study Research”,  Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, 1989”]

[”Simpatico in store retailing: How immigrant Hispanic emic interpret U.S. store atmorpherics and interations with sales associates” by D.Fowler, S.Wesley, M.Vazquez, 2006]

[“The Case Study as a Research Method”, https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ssoy/usesusers/l391d1b.htm]

[“Behavior and perception of using safety gear among commercial landscapers: A pilot study”; G.Kearney, X.Xu, A.Hight, T.Arcury, Journal od Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 2013]