Selection of cases

For selecting cases, probability methods, which are "based on the concept of random selection - a controlled procedure that assures that each element of total population is given a known nonzero chance of selection" (Cooper & Schindler, 1998), could not be applied in this work, because it was not feasible to embrace all the content-providers using affiliate marketing at their websites. This group is very large and it is changing constantly.

Instead non-probability methods were employed. Three content providers were chosen by the researchers for conducting the case studies. They were chosen by convenience selection method, which means selecting cases according to their availability and accessibility for the researchers (Saunders, Lewis, Thornhill, 2000:177), using personal contacts. The reason for applying this type of selection methods was mainly the availability of such contacts and expected willingness to provide the data.

In order to answer the research questions of this work, content providers that were selected for case studies needed to meet several criteria. First, they had to own or run several different websites and use affiliate marketing at least at part of them for one year or longer. This condition should have ensured that the content providers had experience with different types of websites, they were knowledgeable about affiliate marketing and were able to assess its advantages and disadvantages.

Second, they had to employ at least one other type of online advertising at their websites, so that they were able to compare affiliate marketing with other advertising options. Furthermore, running websites should have been the primary job for content providers, so that they were highly involved in performance of their websites and generated revenue and tried to achieve the best results for them.

Websites of the selected content providers should have been focused at different topics and should have not used identical affiliate programs. Focusing only at one business area or few affiliate programs could distort results of this work, as they could be dependent on performance of merchants providing the programs, or having dominant position at the market.

Was this article helpful?