The Expert Group was comprised of:
2 bankers
3 business instructors at the College of the North Atlantic
5 business development offices with various levels of government
The interviews lasted 30 to 60 minutes and all questions were posed with a focus on the marketing context of local small and medium sized businesses. The format was an in-depth interview that allowed each participant to contribute to the research in a way that demonstrated their core competency. Questions revolved around: feasibility/business plans, product development, working with lending and development institutions, education, the accounting-marketing connection, marketing and advertising in general, and anything else that could be discussed in an hour.
The participants were only shown one simple chart (a tree diagram) – New Entrepreneurs and Experienced Entrepreneurs. And the questions were posed in a way to fill in the information for each type of entrepreneur separately.
Some members of the expert group wish to remain anonymous to prevent their comments from being attached to the company which they represent. The interviews were extremely candid.
Appendix 2
Image 1 and 2 – questionnaire pg 28-29
Identified flaws in the marketing questionnaire:
- A higher return rate may have been achieved if a call to action was included. I did not instruct the recipient to return the survey by a specific date.
- There were no warm up questions. This was a strategic decision. I thought putting the amount of advertising/marketing budget first would trigger their memory when answering the other questions. If they said they spend X dollars, then they would have to account for that in the questions that followed.
- Was mailing the survey the cause of a six percent return rate? I know if I went door-to-door I would have received as high as a 50 percent return rate but this would have taken too much time. It would have also biased the survey as local business people might have answered questions the way they thought I wanted them answered. This was a tough call.
- Because the return rate was only 6 percent of 187 questionnaires, resulting in a sample of ten, nonparametric statistical analysis could not be performed.