DDBA 8300 Week 8 Design Feasibility Brief Example

Priced in Months, Doors and Signatures: A Feasibility Brief Comparing Two Ways to Study Why Members Cancel a Farm Cooperative's Weekly Produce Box, and Why the Cheaper Route Answers When but Not Why

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8300: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodology for Applied Business Research

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Priced in Months, Doors and Signatures: A Feasibility Brief Comparing Two Ways to Study Why Members Cancel a Farm Cooperative's Weekly Produce Box, and Why the Cheaper Route Answers When but Not Why

The Question

A composite cooperative of 23 family farms in western Michigan sells a weekly produce box by subscription to about 3,100 households in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. About 40 percent of new members cancel within their first season, and the cooperative's board wants to know why. My research question is: "What reasons do members give for canceling their produce box subscription within their first season, and how do those reasons relate to their experience of the box?" This brief prices two ways of studying it in the currencies that limit a doctoral study, time, access and approvals, and checks each against the question.

Route One: Mining the Membership Records

The cooperative's subscription platform records every member's start date, box size, delivery or pickup choice, skipped weeks, add-on purchases, customer service contacts and cancellation date. A records study could analyze the full history of about 5,400 members who joined over the past three seasons, modeling when members cancel and which recorded characteristics go with earlier cancellation. Fader and Hardie (2009) describe models for exactly this kind of customer-base analysis, and they can predict when customers are likely to leave from patterns in their transaction history.

Table 1

Feasibility of the Two Routes

Time estimates from the cooperative's data manager and the university's review office.

Route Two: Interviewing Former Members

Interviews with about 15 to 20 former members, chosen to include delivery and pickup customers, small and large boxes and early and late cancelers, would ask them to describe their experience of the box and how they decided to cancel. Malterud et al. (2016) suggest that a focused aim and participants chosen for relevant experience allow modest numbers; recent cancelers are the people whose experience the question targets.

Why the Cheaper Route Falls Short

Route one is cheaper on every measure: half the time, one door and a quicker review. It would show, for example, that members who skipped three or more weeks in their first month canceled much sooner, or that pickup members left earlier than delivery members. But it cannot tell the cooperative why. Did skipping happen because the box held vegetables members did not know how to cook, because a family went on vacation or because the box was too large? The records record skips, not reasons. The question asks for reasons. Creswell and Creswell (2018) emphasize that the design must follow from the question; here, the cheaper design would answer a question the board did not ask.

A Combination Worth Its Cost

The records could still help route two. A first pass through the records, taking about a month, would identify patterns, such as early skipping, that the interviews could then explore. It would also help choose interviewees who represent the main patterns. That adds a month and one signature to route two but would make the interviews more focused.

What the Review Board Will Ask

The university's review office has said that interviews with former customers raise two questions it will want answered. The first is whether former members might feel pressured because the cooperative sends the invitation; the consent form will state that the researcher, not the cooperative, conducts and stores the interviews and that the cooperative will see only summaries without names. The second is whether the thank-you credit is large enough to be coercive; at the value of one small box, it is unlikely to be, but the board will decide. Answering both in the first submission should avoid a second round of review.

Recommendation

Pursue route two, preceded by a short records review. The full timeline is about seven months, within the program's window for data collection. The main risk is recruitment: former members may not respond. The cooperative has agreed to send the first invitation under its own name, with a small credit toward a future box as thanks, which the review board will need to approve.

References

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Fader, P. S., & Hardie, B. G. S. (2009). Probability models for customer-base analysis. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23(1), 61-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2008.11.003

Malterud, K., Siersma, V. D., & Guassora, A. D. (2016). Sample size in qualitative interview studies: Guided by information power. Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), 1753-1760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732315617444