Data For: Building a 4E Interview-Grounded Theory Model: A Case Study of Demand Factors for Customized Furniture

Résumé 0

Project Summary This project examined factors that influence the demand for customized furniture among consumers in different regions across China. The researchers used a new 4E interview-grounded theory model to conduct semi-structured interviews exploring the topic. The authors developed the 4E interview guide, based on grounded theory, to capture consumer opinions along four dimensions: essential information, information extraction, user experience, product expectation. The 4E interview guide was able to structure and organize the factors influencing the demand for customized furniture to ensure the integrity of the interview content. The initial coding categories derived from the 4E guide have strong logic and adopt grounded theory as the analysis method of interview content. Data Collection and Description Overview This study was approved for ethical review by the Science and Technology Office of Nanjing Forestry University. At the same time, all participants signed a written informed consent form before the interview, which included the basic information of this study, the right to voluntary withdrawal and the financial reward. Before full data collection began, two pilot interviews were conducted as a field sample interview test. The initial 4E interview guide, created on the basis of literature review on relevant consumer experience topics, was then adjusted and refined according to the interviewees’ responses. The final interview guide contains both the main themes the researchers explored, and follow-up questions used to gain an in-depth understanding of users’ thoughts and guide participants to return to the main themes in their responses. The full data collection took place between February and April 2022. The researchers interviewed 36 consumers who have purchased customized furniture or needed to purchase customized furniture in the previous six months. With the consent of the interviewees, the interviews were recorded. The interview conversations were held in the homes or offices of the interviewees. In order to make the interview results more representative, this study selected people with different occupations and levels of education; half of the respondents were male and half female. The interviewees ranged from 20-55 years in age, including 32 young people aged 20-35. This is consistent with the fact that, according to the Weekly Report of Light Industry and Textile Garment Industry, China’s post-90s and post-85s generations rank first and second in preference for customized furniture in 2020. The results of the interviews were coded and analyzed by both researchers, and new concepts and categories were collected in a continuously inductive process. Saturation tests were conducted on the coding results to construct a model of the influencing factors of customized furniture. In other words, when no new initial concepts, new categories and path relations appeared in the coding process of the original text data of the subsequent interviewees, the primary and secondary categories were determined to be complete and passed the theoretical saturation test. Selection and Organization of Shared Data The data shared here consist of the full set of 36 de-identified interview transcripts in Chinese, with the most relevant portions analyzed for the accompanying article translated in English by the authors. The full interview script is also shared as contextualizing documentation.