RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY




To answer the above research question and test the derived competing propositions, we conduct exploratory empirical case studies. As a research method, case study is particularly suitable for IS research, when researchers examine a current phenomenon within its real-world context [41]. Case study arguably is the most often used qualitative methodology employed in IS research [2, 27]. The firsthand real experiences provided by the case study interviewees offer intimate information on the phenomenon of interest. We report and interpret the interviewees’ accounts of their experience and their take on using eBay/Amazon and Craigslist. As suggested by [24, 25], in the case study approach, investigators typically focus on one or at most a few cases. We submit to the idea of [17] that the principal belief of contemporary empiricism is the vision that all non-analytic knowledge is grounded on experience. Thus, this exploratory study is clearly based on the empirical experience, though from only a handful of cases. We recognize the possible bias and the issue with the generalizability of the results. However, the objective of this exploratory study is to attain the preliminary understanding of the problem. In the future, more advanced theoretical development may benefit from the insight gleaned from this study.



We interviewed a few voluntary participants for this research who had experiences of buying and selling items on eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist. The voluntary participants came from a convenient sample of undergraduate business students in a U.S. University. During an informal and unstructured interview, we first briefed the participant the purpose of our research and then asked the participant what he/she thought of the difference between eBay/Amazon and Craigslist in terms of buying and selling stuffs for personal purpose. Based on the participant’ responses, we sometimes raised follow up questions to get clarified answers. Next, we report the empirical evidences we collected from our exploratory case studies.