Pilot Study

The pilot study was derived from the interviews with two collections of informants, clients and Customer Care agents.

3.2.1.1 Participants of pilot study

10 respondents (5 answered the local speaker version and 5 respondents filled the non-local speaker version questionnaire) were conducted in order to determine possible unfairness. To reduce error it was aimed for made scenario to be realistic and clear.

Customer

Participant Age Nationality Language

A 45 Taiwan Chinese

B 51 Taiwan Chinese

C 24 Taiwan Chinese

D 28 Taiwan Chinese

E 34 Taiwan Chinese

F 28 Philippines Tagalog/English

G 35 Philippines Tagalog/English

H 26 Philippines Tagalog/English

I 28 Philippines Tagalog/English

J 62 Philippines Tagalog/English

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Customer Care Representatives:

Participant Nationality Language Language Customer Care Provided in

A Taiwan Chinese Chinese

B Taiwan Chinese Chinese

C Taiwan Chinese Chinese/English

D Taiwan Chinese Chinese/English

E Philippines Tagalog/English Tagalog/English F Philippines Tagalog/English Tagalog/English G Philippines Tagalog/English Tagalog/English

3.2.1.1 Interviews with clients

When taking qualitative approach interview is a literally standard tool to obtain information. They are interviewed by researcher in order to get information that is unobservable, like feelings, thoughts and intentions (Patton, 2002). During interviews researcher has chance to discover a person´s behavior and value (Silverman, 2006).

However, interviews are normally not practiced in the survey methods mostly due to time and financial demand.

The thesis centers on exploring the power of language on the perceived service quality in the context of Asian countries and languages with emphasizes on the Chinese and Tagalog language. Due to the thesis being conducted in two countries, ten interviews with customers were carried out with five respondents of Taiwanese nationality and five of Filipino nationality. The major reason for carrying out the interviews with clients was to gain a pre-understanding on the topic prior to the survey study and then search for likeness and dissimilarities with non-Asian research.

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Hypotheses were recommended after the pilot study findings.

Interviews with Taiwanese informants were conducted during March, 2014 in Taipei, Taiwan. Five face-to-face interviews lasted about 10 minutes each. Likewise, five interviews with Filipinos were carried out with around same duration but interviewed conducted via Skype. These interviews took a place in March/2014 in Taipei.

Several methods may be taken in regard to case selection. For example, Patton (2006) varies among sixteen different techniques within two categories – random probability and purposeful sampling. In qualitative interviews the number of informants is rather small with the study aim being to obtain in-depth insight to a problem. Therefore, as Eisenhardt (1989) stated, cases selection is vital for creating theory. In this study the purposeful sampling was used leaving on the researcher to choose the cases for own research purposes.

Informants were selected in regard to the purposive sampling, where it is the researcher choosing respondents on the beginning of their suitability with the study aim. As Patton (2002) states it the information-rich cases are to be selected. Therefore, within the purposive sampling a criteria selection has been applied. The informants had to complete the condition of at least one communication with a call center prior to interviews.

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3.2.1.2 Interview guide for clients

Interview guide is used when researcher performed the interview guide method when the interview proceeds on the basis of a set of predefined questions. In this case, researcher may follow exciting way in conversation returning later back to the guide process. Aside from the open ended questions, they were described a short scenario of calling to a call center and then asked to answer some questions. The incentive for including this short scenario was for researcher to get a real picture of their attitude towards one specific situation.

3.2.1.3 Interviews with Customer Care agents

The interviews with the agents were significant part of this these since these employees, all non-local speakers, communicate or communicated with clients – local speakers on the daily basis. In this situation, the criteria sampling was used as well and prior to the interview informants had to have a work experience as Customer Care agent in a call center. It was very valuable to get an insight from this and the interviews were source of great information on the non-local speakers. Agents were chosen to represent maximum variety of Asian languages and countries. The interviews were conducted during March 2014 in Taipei. Seven face-to-face interviews lasted approximately 20 minutes each.

3.2.1.4 Interview guide for Customer Care agents

The interview guide for agents includes to a high extent similar questions as the interview guide for clients. However, there are some differences too. Firstly, it takes

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the agent´s opinion and it is based rather than on scenario on individual experiences.

Additionally the background questions are expanded by the set of enquires concerned with the second language acquisition.

3.2.1.5 Questions design for interview

As stated above, the interviews with clients and agents formed the base for determining the aspects used in the survey part. Thus, categories found by the pilot study analysis were developed when designing a questionnaire.

Questionnaire has been chosen as the most suitable method for the data gaining.

Questionnaire has a multiple use often being utilized in experiments and case studies.

Due to the fact that one of the study purpose was to explore whether perception of non-local speakers differs between two countries, Taiwan and Philippines, the questionnaire was distributed in two geographically different locations and moreover in two language versions.

Scenario experiment was used as the most suitable choice for the study aim. Saunders et al. (2009) stated that experiments are considered to explore whether there is a relationship between two variables. In experiments respondents are normally assigned into two groups, experimental and control. Assigning to groups occurs on the random basis. In this thesis, respondents receiving “non-local speaker” version of scenario are members of experimental group whilst those getting “local speaker” version are considered as a control group. Roggeeveen et al. (2007) used in the similar study the scenario based questionnaire with the own research scale items developed. As they point out scenario based technique allows controlling the independent variables and guarantee that all respondents are given the same treatment. The classical form of

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questionnaire with questions and answers based on the respondent´s knowledge did not go well with this study aims since prior to the survey study a comprehensive inquiry would have to be carried out to find only respondents having a prior experience with the non-local speakers in call centers. Furthermore, the types of call centers would most likely significantly vary making experiences of respondents non-comparable. Thus, the scenario experiment when respondent is presented with a story and asked to imagine being the part of it seems to be the most suitable selection. Once scenario was presented, a set of follow up questions was introduced after the play. The scenario was printed in two versions distinguishing only in the characteristic of call center employee being and not being the language´s local speaker. The presented scenario (purchasing a membership and later making complaint in Customer Care) received a positive feedback during the pilot study with respondents stating that scenario was easy to imagine and represented a type of situation most of the people have already experienced. The fact that all respondents base their answers on the same text can be seen as the advantage of Scenario Experiment. However, the scenario is only a made-up and respondent´s answer does not need to necessarily reflect their real behavior when it comes to the situation.

3.2.2 Survey study