In-depth interviews are the most important source of case study evidence (Yin, 2014). The purpose of the interviews is to get an in-depth understanding of companies’ crisis management plans, why the companies have decided on their chosen strategy during the pandemic and how they have adapted their marketing activities to suit the government restrictions as this is what we want to uncover
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with our research questions. All participants were asked if they preferred to stay anonymous, or if their company name could be mentioned in the research.
Furthermore, by conducting interviews, we get the opportunity to be more flexible and dig deeper if trends or unique cases emerge. In-depth interviews allow the researcher to immediately clarify miscommunication and ask follow up questions to findings of interest. They are also useful to answer our research question as the questions are complex and require a level of explanation. Compared to focus groups, in-depth interviews allow the researcher to explain their way of thinking and explain the reasoning behind their decision making without being affected by others presence or statements. As some of the topics discussed in the interviews can be sensitive, in-depth interviews were preferred. Thus, due to the
opportunities presented by conducting in-depth interviews, this was the most beneficial research method for our research project.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to maintain consistency through all the interviews (Corbin & Strauss, 2015, p. 39). An interview guide was created beforehand, in order to ensure that the same topics were covered in each interview. However, the topics were not structurally covered through each interview, as the participant was able to talk freely (Corbin & Strauss, 2015, p.
39). According to Corbin and Strauss (2015), having a semi-structured interview also opens up for the researcher to ask additional questions that were not in the original interview guide. This was useful for us during the interviews in order to clarify or get additional information.
Shorter case study interviews were conducted as these types of interviews tend to be more focused and last for about one hour (Yin, 2014). The reasoning for this was that the interview participants have a busy schedule, and in order to get a sufficient amount of in-depth interviews shorter interviews increased our chances of firms agreeing to participate.
3.3.2 Interview Procedure
The interview participants were industry professionals and contacted through email. The email used is presented in appendix 2. A total of thirteen in-depth
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interviews were conducted over a time period of two months. All interviews were conducted through Zoom, due to the ongoing pandemic and the fact that some of the respondents were located in different cities. Six interviews were conducted in the restaurant sector, and a total of seven interviews were conducted within the education sector. As all the participants were Norwegian speaking, the in-depth interviews were conducted in Norwegian to avoid language barriers.
Before conducting the interviews, a pre-test of the interview guide was performed on two fellow students to ensure that the questions were understandable and perceived as high quality. The interview guide was then adjusted based on feedback from the test interview. According to Yin (2014), questions should be asked in an unbiased manner, which can be avoided by asking “how” questions instead of “why” questions. This was something we kept in mind when doing the changes. It was evident that in order to get a better flow during the interviews. The questions needed to be grouped more accurately according to our themes and we changed the order of the questions for the interview to flow more smoothly. We also found that for a few of the questions it was a bit difficult for the interview participant to understand what information we were looking for. Therefore, the wording of the questions was adapted in order for us to be better understood, and to ensure that we got the correct data to answer our research questions.
During the interview, we divided the tasks so that one researcher was asking questions and the other researcher was taking notes. This way, it was not necessary for the participants to sign a consent form as the interview was not recorded. Also, participants often feel more comfortable to reveal information when the recorder is turned off (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). By having one
researcher to ask questions, a more personal relationship was formed between the researcher and the participant, and the researcher had the opportunity to have some flexibility and dig deeper if we found any trends or unique features (Eisenhardt, 1989). We made sure to start each interview with level 1 questions (unthreatening) to make the participant feel comfortable and ease into the interview. We then continued with level 2 questions to satisfy our needs and get the information necessary to answer our research questions (Yin, 2014). After each in depth interview, the interviews were transcribed to be ready for analysis (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). By doing this directly after the interview, we got an
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in-depth knowledge of the data which was helpful for coding. All the interview transcriptions were also translated from Norwegian to English to ensure
successful coding.