Integrating deductive and inductive approaches in a study of new ventures and customer perceived risk

Abstract

Draws upon a study of the ways in which entrepreneurs use trust to mediate customer perceived risk at the start of a venture in order to show how researchers can combine elements of both approaches in an epistemologically consistent way. Specifically, researchers seeking to use an inductivist/qualitative approach can start with an a priori specification of constructs, perhaps in the form of a model. One of the ways in which this can help researchers is to identify where they should look in order to find the phenomena of interest to them. We argue that the difference between inductivist and deductivist research is how they draw upon existing research: in inductivist research theory can be used where it is composed of constructs while theory represented in the form of variables is more appropriate in hypothetico-deductive research.