CHAPTER 3 Literature Review.................................................................... 23-83
4. Methodology
4.2 Qualitative Research
4.2.1 In-depth Interviews
The in-depth interviews were conducted separately in four stages in order to investigate the three main concepts in the specific context of brokerage services. The first stage of the in-depth interviews was for understanding and identifying service encounter dis/satisfaction drivers, either in technology-based service encounters or interpersonal service encounters. Such qualitative approaches are very appropriate, even necessary, in the beginning stages of developing knowledge about unfamiliar situations (Krik and Miller 1986; Spiggle 1994). Certainly, research on dis/satisfaction with technology-based service encounters is an area which has not received extensive research in South Asian context, and the concepts are not well developed or extensively tested. For application of SSTs to high level services, this is particularly true. In contexts such as use of internet for brokerage services, the SST is so new that almost no research is available on dis/satisfaction in Bangladesh perspective.
However, there is disagreement about the research approach for identifying sources of customer dis/satisfaction with service encounters. Much of the work uses a method called critical-incident technique (CIT). As mentioned in the previous chapter, respondents in the CIT method are asked to describe a specific critical incident in as much detail as possible, then the researchers develops a schema for categorizing the incidents, such as the schema for drivers of dis/satisfaction with interpersonal service encounter (Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault 1990; Bitner, Booms, and Mohr 1994). There are several versions of this research methodology, focusing on one or several critical incidents, or sometimes only on incidents which are strong enough to induce switching, but they all share this attention to details of specific interactions, and depend upon the respondent to remember these details (Edvardsson and Roos 2001).
Nonetheless, Chandon, Leo, and Phillippe (1997) argue that the dimensions of service encounters should be measured by questionnaires, not derived from CIT, as in Bitner,
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Booms, and Tetreault (1990) and Bitner, Booms, and Mohr (1994). The main reasons are that CIT uses data heavily based on the customers’ memories and judgment about critical incidents, which are relatively scarce in most services. Thus, Chandon, Leo, and Phillippe (1997) believe that CIT does not give cues to assess ordinary encounters.
Although CIT is essentially a qualitative exploratory approach (Marshall and Rossman 1989), this research performed a different qualitative approach, not CIT, in looking at the drivers of customer dis/satisfaction with service encounter in stock trading. Partially, this is because the point by Chandon, Leo, and Philippe (1997) has some validity. Furthermore, high context Bangladeshi culture, with femininity and collectivism (in Hofstede’s (1994) terminology), is more accustomed to verbal expression, and comfortable with in-depth interviews, rather than with detailed explanations of situations in critical incidents, as in CIT. Bangladeshi prospective respondents would not be familiar with extensive expression of their service experiences, particularly complaints when service delivery fails, since politeness is a key cultural value, even to providers of poor service. Therefore, in-depth interviewing seemed to be more appropriate in this case.
4.2.1.1 The first stage of in-depth interviews
Previous research has shown that some sources of customer dis/satisfaction with service encounters can be perceived differently between customers and service providers. Too much of gap can lead to poor service, as it indicates that the service providers may not understand the customer very well. Thus, it is important to examine sources of customer dis/satisfaction with service encounters not only from the service provider’s point of view, but also from the customer view point. Therefore, in-depth interviews were conducted separately with service providers (marketing officers of stockbrokerage firms), and with customers (retail stock traders) to identify sources of customer dis/satisfaction with service encounters.
According to the literature, customer satisfaction with technology-based service encounters is likely to form somewhat differently than with interpersonal service encounters, thus the exploratory in-depth interviews were performed to investigate the dis/satisfaction drivers of each of the two service encounters.
Interviewing of the two respondent bases –brokers and customers-was parallel, not consecutive. The in-depth interviews took about four months from November 2015 to
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February 2016. The interviews were conducted in the Bengali language, with only one interviewer in order to reduce inconsistencies across interviews. The interviewer took detailed notes during the interview and wrote up a complete interview report immediately after the interview. The main reason for not recording is that most Bangladeshi are not comfortable giving their opinions if their words will be recorded. Analysis was continuous throughout the interview process in order to follow up on emergent ideas and to organize insights and incorporate them into further interviews. Triangulation of insights across informants (and with the literature) was employed to elevate the trustworthiness of the findings (Fournier and Mick 1999).
At the beginning, an in-depth interview was initially conducted with a former assistant vice president responsible for the on-line trading division for a big stockbrokerage firm (Lanka-Bangla Finance; IDLC Finance; United Finance etc) in Bangladesh, who also had extensive previous experience with direct contact in serving customers. This interview took four hours. Additional interviews were conducted with marketing officers who have direct contact with customers and with retail stock traders (the customers). These qualitative interviews followed a guide covering the sources of customer dis/satisfaction known from the literature. In most of the interview, specific categories from the literature were not mentioned, so that responses about dis/satisfaction came from the respondent, not the interviewer. Through probing, the categories which had not been mentioned later in the interview were brought in to see if respondents recognized them as independent elements. Retail stock traders were also interviewed following the aforementioned approach, with twenty interviews conducted either face to face or by telephone as described in the following sections.
4.2.1.2 In-depth interviews with service providers
The first respondent had extensive experience with direct contact in serving customers and also as a former frequent stock trader. Thus, this in-depth interview provided valuable insights on service encounter dis/satisfaction drivers for either technology-based or interpersonal service encounters from both a service provider and (semi-)customer viewpoint. Further interviews were conducted with twenty marketing officers who have direct contact with customers in the eight stock brokerage firms in Chittagong, Bangladesh which concurrently provided both offline and on-line trading at the time the qualitative research was conducted. After initial informal conversation about general issues and the
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respondent’s profile and experience, the interview followed an interview guide covering the sources of customer dis/satisfaction when customer traded through the marketing officer and when the customer used on-line trading independently (Appendix A). In the last part of each interview, the respondents were asked to classify sources of customer dis/satisfaction with service encounters into the dimensions identified in the literature. The in-depth interviewing was conducted during weekdays at lunch hours or immediately after office hours in the late afternoon. The interviews with the twenty marketing officers took about four months and each in-depth interview lasted between two to three hours.
4.2.1.3 In-depth interviews with typical customers
Retail stock traders (the customers) were the main target group of this research. The in- depth interviews with retail stock traders were also conducted following the aforementioned approach. However, ten of the in-depth interviews were conducted face to face, and another ten were telephone interviews. Although in-depth interviews are best conducted face to face, in some situations telephone interviewing can be successful (Lofland and Lofland 1995). The main reason to employ telephone interviews was that many typical retail stock traders do not come in to trade on the trading floor or directly with the broker, but rather conduct business over the phone or, now, by internet. There may be differences in thinking about technology-based versus interpersonal service encounters across these two groups, so it was necessary to include both. Therefore, the face to face in-depth interviews were conducted with retail stock traders who typically stay and trade in the trading rooms, whereas telephone in-depth interviews were conducted with retail stock traders who usually trade via telephone or internet from their remote locations.
The face to face interviews aimed at getting sixteen customers, two from each broker. Ten interviewees participated. The response rate was moderately high, about sixty percent, since the stock market was not busy during the interviewing times and traders were interested in talking about trading. These face to face interviews lasted one to two hours.
While face to face interviews were conducted with convenience samples at trading floors without advance appointment, the telephone in-depth interviews required introductions, sometimes by brokers, sometimes by other retail traders. Appointments were made for the call, thus, most of those approached were willing to be interviewed. Therefore, the response rate was higher, at eighty percent. The interview length ranged from 45 to 90 minutes, slightly shorter, on average, than the face to face ones.
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The respondents’ ages ranged from 25 to 62 years, and the gender split was approximately even. Occupations were quite varied, from housewives to professors, from investors to speculators and even from non-professional traders to very sophisticated investors.
However, most respondents were members of the middle to upper-middle class. The respondents who trade at a trading room usually execute orders every day. All respondents have traded for 3 to 10 years. However, those who trade on-line had about two years’
experience trading on-line.
Previous research noted differences in how service suppliers and customers viewed sources of customer dis/satisfaction. The in-depth interviews with 20 service providers and 20 customers in stock brokerage services found that their views on the sources of customer dis/satisfaction in interpersonal service encounters were slightly different from the two perspectives. However, dis/satisfaction drivers with technology-based service encounters were perceived more similarly by both groups.