The Potentialities of Focus Groups in E-Business Research: Theory Validation

  • Sharman Lichtenstein
  • Paula M. C. Swatman
Chapter
Part of the IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing book series (IFIPAICT, volume 123)

Abstract

Focus groups enable the rapid and timely collation, integration and assembly of the views of a variety of different types of stakeholders into plausible theory. This paper examines the usefulness of the focus group as an e-business research method, using an exemplar of focus group deployment for the purpose of theory validation as its illustration. Our results suggest that a focus group can be effective as a strategy in e-business research, providing a useful alternative or complementary method to more traditional empirical methods. We provide a set of guidelines for effective focus groups in e-business research, which may prove useful to researchers contemplating employing the focus group method in a research design.

Keywords

Focus Group Information System Focus Group Session Theory Validation Network Administrator 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2003

Authors and Affiliations

  • Sharman Lichtenstein
    • 1
  • Paula M. C. Swatman
    • 2
  1. 1.School of Information Systems, Faculty of Business and LawDeakin UniversityAustralia
  2. 2.Institute for Management, Faculty of InformaticsUniversity of Koblenz-LandauGermany

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