WargoTex – Qualitative Research and Social Distancing

As mentioned in my last blog post, I am currently conducting a research assistant internship on business model experimentation as a part of the WargoTex project. My research focusses on the opportunities and challenges of developing a joint business model for circularity in the fashion industry. Within the first four weeks of my field study, I reviewed literature on various relating topics in order to gain an overview over the recent developments in this field of research. After finishing the literature review, I started developing a small-scale example of a joint business model based on shared business processes and knowledge transfer. Since Björkåfrihet, Lindex and KappAhl are the featuring companies within this part of the project, I specifically included them into the process flow diagram in order to both enable them to better imagine the specific opportunities and challenges they might face and to enable me to assess these opportunities and challenges in more detail. 

Starting with a general overview of circular initiatives from various clothing retailers, I discovered that fashion brands have indeed tried to incorporate circular processes into their linear business models, however, innovating the business model in its whole often seems to be a prerequisite for truly sustainable change. Therefore, I researched different approaches to business model experimentation as a means for business model innovation. In the case of circular approaches, developing a joint business model based on a collaborative network has been proven to be the most successful, including opportunities such as increasing bargaining power and market share, as well as achieving substantial cost reduction for joint investments. Nevertheless, the development of a joint business model can also contain certain challenges such as legal uncertainty, decreased corporate autonomy and flexibility, as well as a lack of interorganisational trust. 

While I am still waiting for responses from the companies, I also wanted to address the challenges of conducting qualitative research in times of social distancing. Originally, I was planning to conduct in-depth interviews with representatives from various departments, but due to the current circumstances, I had to revise these plans. I opted for open-answer questionnaires instead since I didn’t want to compromise the depth of results. Open-answer questionnaires can be categorised as a qualitative data collection method since they are similar to an interview with the exception that the interviewee is not answering the questions verbally, but in writing. Obviously, certain advantages of interpersonal communication such as explaining the questions, reassuring the answers or steering the conversation cannot be achieved, however, the interviewees can still openly respond without being restricted to certain multiple-choice answers. Nevertheless, the apparent advantages of interpersonal communication can also cause a distortion of results, e.g. through influencing the respondents to focus on one specific aspect of their answer while neglecting others. In fact, while utilising open-answer questionnaires, this distortion of results can be minimised. The last blog post will include an assessment of the sufficiency of open-answer questionnaires as a qualitative substitute for in-depth interviews.