QUALITATIVE THEMATIC ANALYSIS 1

Qualitative Thematic Analysis

NORTHCENTRAL

MEKDAD ZIDAN

04/28/2022

Institutional Affiliation
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Introduction

Use of qualitative analysis has gained traction among researchers owing to its detailed

approach in studying phenomenon of interest. Narrative data provides an in-depth description of

a topical issue since themes developed from the data produce higher order themes that broaden

the understanding of the subject matter (Castleberry & Nolen, 2018). Thus, thematic analysis is

one of the key approaches to analyzing narrative data with a view to exhaustively explain a given

phenomenon (Amankwaa, 2016). The current paper adopts the use of thematic analysis in

pointing key concepts that emerge from the business startup conversation. Furthermore, the

paper offers perspective into how data are organized, themes developed from the patterns in the

codes, triangulation, and software usage.

Approach to Qualitative Thematic Analysis

In terms of organizing data, there was close examination of data to understand the context

of the data and the key themes emerging when reading through. In other words, data was

examined closely to point out common patterns, themes, ideas, and topics of meaning that

repeatedly emerged. This required that all the three transcripts were read to have a feel of the

data and develop an appreciative inquiry of what it takes to start a business. Familiarization to

the transcripts is critical since the researcher understands the background of the

narration/conversation and how the line of inquiry expands to provide a holistic perspective into

business startups.

Familiarization enhances thematic development since the recurring

phrases/concepts/words/ideas are coded. Labeling or attaching codes to the words or sentences

that convey parallel meaning enhanced drafting of preliminary topical issues that emerged

(Belotto, 2018). For instance, in the business startups transcripts, the repeated concepts were
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financing, funding, entrepreneurship, lending/loaning, marketing, saving, brand identity, among

others. Triangulation is one of the key approaches to validating themes in qualitative analysis.

One of the ways is to use multiple coders to eliminate the possibility of bias since they will offer

a naturalistic inquiry, sort the results, and validate the themes (Richards & Hemphill, 2018).

Thus, triangulation is done by incorporating independent researchers to label codes with a view

to thematic development.

Use of software greatly saves on time and improves the clarity of the qualitative analysis.

Software, such as Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) and

NVivo software, are essential qualitative data analysis tools that aid analysis of transcripts from

focus group discussions and interviews. To analyze data, transcript data is imported into NVivo

or CAQDAS followed by coding of the data in the interface. Use of software enables researchers

to search for keywords and compare concepts that have been identified before (Çayir & Saritaş,

2017; Connelly, 2016). Furthermore, software application has more rigor or trustworthiness

(Amankwaa, 2016). Furthermore, it reduces bias while at the same time enables collaboration,

which is key to increasing inter-rate reliability.

Extracted Themes

Transcript familiarization enabled the researcher to identify an array of themes, such as

business plan, financing, funding, marketing, entrepreneurship, saving/conserving money, and

brand identity. However, three key themes that repeatedly emerged are: entrepreneurship,

marketing, and business financing.

Entrepreneurship

According to the interpretation of the data, entrepreneurship refers to the business activities

undertaken by an individual aimed at introducing a new product or services to the market with an
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intention to disrupt the way the market operates (Kraus et al., 2020). This suggests that

entrepreneurship entails taking a risk to start a business with an aim of making a profit. Some of

the quotes from the transcript are highlighted below:

My best quick tips for entrepreneurs is one, make sure your idea is really good. [Eric

Ryan, Co-Founder, Method, San Francisco] And what we did was, don't ask your friends,

because they're going to tell you it's good, no matter how crap it is, because they're your

friend. So you've got to get a panel of people together from a cross-section of experts who

will give you real, honest feedback.

Some advice I can give to help start a business and get it to grow pretty quickly in a short

period of time is 1, having a pretty good grip on who your competition is. [Research Your

Competition.] We did a lot of shopping of the competition before we started the business.

2, being able to make sure customers could find us easily

There's entrepreneurship and there's management, and they're not the same thing. [Jay

Goltz, CEO, Artists Frame Services, Chicago] And, you know, you need to keep your

entrepreneur hat on, looking for opportunities, creating things, but you also need to put

your management hat on of watching the boring details. Business is as in school,

marketing, management, and finance. [Fine tune your marketing, managing and finance

skills.] And you better have a handle on all three of those things, because you can't be

great in one, fair in another, and bad in the third one.

Marketing

The construct of marketing is widely applied in the transcript. Business startups are about is

about formulating the right marketing mix so that the product, place, promotion, and price are

understood by the entrepreneur. The concept of marketing refers to the activities of selling,
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promoting products and services in addition to undertaking market research to understand

consumer trends and preferences (Polanco-Diges & Debasa, 2020). Put differently, marketing

involves constantly seeking what consumers think of the services or product offered by the

organization through market research. Some of the quotes from the transcript are highlighted

below:

The essence of marketing is knowing who your customer is and what do they want.

[Seth Bell, Founder & CEO, Pacific Crest Industries, Sumner, WA] And you could take all

the marketing stuff in the world, it's all fluff, if you don't know who your customer, is and

what do they want. What do they need? What do they need to be satisfied? When you've

answered those two questions, when you define your customer and you define the product,

then you can meet that need. To define our customer, we've hired marketing research firms

that actually interview our customers, our dealer customers, and we also interview our

direct final end user customers, and we compile data on demographics.

So before we go into a market, and before we implement anything in our company, we

must know the demographics, the statistics, the economics, around each of those ideas, or

each of those plans, or each of those cities, or points that we plan to move to. [Maurice

Strone, Chairman & CEO, Intrepid Holdings, Houston] It's important to know what your

consumer, or your patient, or your provider, which is a doctor, or hospital, or clinic is

doing in the marketplace. If we don't research who's on Medicaid, who's on Medicare,

who's on insurance, what the demographics look like in this market, or what the

demographics look like in that market, we won't know where to place our services. We

won't know where to put our clinics. We won't know where to deliver our pharmacy

services, or any of the other services that we do.

As far as how we shopped the competition, or used the competition, to build our business

out of the chute is that we went through and looked at a ton of our competitors' websites.

[Kenneth Hull, Owner, Texas Custom Signs, Austin] Looked at a ton of our competitors'

storefronts. Went in and visited the locations. As far as what methods that I took to build

that process, I kind of took the Wal-Mart approach, and I looked at the websites, I looked

at the locations, looked at the products, and said these are the things-- wrote down notes

as to what they were doing great, what they did good.

Funding

Literature on startups is laden with the concept of funding since new enterprises need capital

and/or investors to begin their operations. From the transcript, the concept of funding refers to

availing, raising, and managing funds by the owner(s) of a business aimed at starting a business

or purchasing assets and supporting the day-to-day operations (Cegielska, 2020). Funding

startups mostly originates from angel investors who are keen to have ownership equity in the

startup (Grilli, 2019). Some of the quotes from the transcript on financing startups are

highlighted below:

Now I can introduce you to someone who has capital. So, you almost got to go, you know,

step by step. If the one person who understands it doesn't have capital, you got to hope

they know somebody who has capital. Obviously access to capital is a core component. I

don't have to tell you that access to capital is tough nowadays.

When I was first getting going, I had the job, but I didn't have any money in the bank

account. I don't have a rich family. I really had no resources to go out to get funding. I

didn't know anybody here. My first idea, which I think a lot of people's first ideas are to get
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funding, was to go to the bank. I mean they have big buildings; they have a lot of money;

they'd be a great place to go ask for some money to start a company.

You've shown good financial statements and all these types of things that add up to a

successful company. And then the next question was, do you own a house? I said, no. And

they said, well we don't really have anything to give you money off of. And I said, well

what about the business plan? Well the business plan is great but what happens if the

business fails? [Banks typically require collateral in return for a business loan] Well then

none of us have any money and we default on the loan.

Conclusion

The review of the startup transcription reinforces the place and utility of qualitative

thematic analysis since researchers are able to establish underlying concepts or factors that are

associated with the issue under investigation. Notably, software application in thematic analysis

provides the most ideal way of evaluating data since the software enhances faster identification

of keywords in addition to enabling collaboration which is key in achieving interrater reliability.

Through the code patterns, researchers are able to raise trustworthiness of a study.
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