Page 11 - To share_Farrugia_Dissertation_Summary_

The most suitable research type for this study was interviews. Perjons
and Johannesson (2014) defined interviews as providing a structured

approach between the interviewer and participant. A semi-structured

interview allowed the interviewer to discuss questions in a flexible way,
enabling the participant to voice unrestricted informed opinion on a

topic. The semi-structured interview methods enabled the author to

gather qualitative information about the application of BD, AI and

analytics, and probe the SMEs to expand of specific areas where BD,
AI and analytics could potentially be applied (to enable them to

streamline their processes and increase the operations efficiency). The

author prompted (encouraging the participant to talk) and probed

(asking more information on certain topics) throughout the interviews.
This empowered the author to assess and evaluate the current practical

applications (of BD, AI and analytics) within the wine industry life cycle

stages, educating participants where there was a knowledge gap in

support to improve their practices within the wine industry.

3.5. *taken out before sharing*

3.6. Research methods (including sampling)
The author created a list of Italian wine organisations be region (shown

in table 27) and selected the region with the highest number of wine

organisations (vineyards): Tuscany. The author selected 180 wine
organisations out of the identified 1752 wine organisations, equivalent

to 10.2% of the selected list of organisations. Since Tuscany is an

established wine producing region (having the largest number of

vineyards), then, the author selected a small sample of (180 out of
1752) wine organisations. Since Tuscany wine organisations have long

been established and are relatively large (when compared to the UK

vineyards), then, the author selected a small sample which should

provide a satisfactory analysis to the BD, AI and analytics applied tools.

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