Investment and management in Energy-saving construction materials market

The sampling result is presented as follows. There are in total 20 subjects, i.e Taiwanese firms specialized in the ESCM area. The first five companies the researcher contacted first have at least three years (some have five) of experience in the industry. Therefore, there is no shortage of companies they have cooperated with in Taiwan. This enables the researcher to get contact with another five firms by way of the former companies recommendation. In the same way, the other 10 firms. In the researching process, the fundamental thing is to stick to the same characteristics of companies because it provides the clue to look for another subject. After finishing the questionnaires with the first five firms, the researcher proceeded onto the next five, and so forth.

In the searching process, it was discovered that experience and scope of network are the two determining criteria for the selection of the suitable subjects (Talmy, 2010). Hence, the research specially mentioned to the recommending firms to bear these two criteria in mind. However, this method was not capable of finding the remaining five firms due to schedule problems. After adjusting the principle of sampling and the need of research, snowball sampling method was used. Basically, after the questionnaire was completed with one firm, the researcher ask the manager to refer the questionnaire to the other managers they know. It was expected to see some reluctance because the managers were quite busy with their responsibilities. In the end, three out of five managers succeeded in referring the questionnaire.

The remaining subjects who agreed to do the questionnaire were slightly different from the preceding ones because they were not strictly focused in ESCM. It was only a small portion of their dealings alongside with whole other types of construction materials. In other words, although they operated in a bigger scope, their feedback might not be as satisfactory. It was also found that the 17th and 20th subjects were starting to switch their focus on ESCM because they suspected there might be a swift market shrinkage. Their focus from 2015-2016 was not entirely on ESCM and spent more investment in expanding the overseas distribution channel. Fortunately, after finishing the 16th questionnaire, the data was more or less sufficient--at least in the preliminary collection and analytic stage.?

There are two parts to the data collection. The first part is the first-hand data, which is gather by the researcher himself. As mentioned in the overview, the data collection instrument is questionnaire which were sent to 20 Taiwanese ESCM companies via emails. The forms contain both close-end and open-end questions regarding the financial and managerial matters. On the one hand, open-end questions investigate how they are operating the financial investments and management protocols. On the other hand, the close-end questions are to examine how they feel about feel about the current situation, namely whether the practices are to their minds correct or not. Also, the close-end and open-end questions have different purposes. For example, the data generated by the close-end questions are to examine their opinions so that the researcher can prove the validity of the hypotheses.

Most importantly, the results can lead to confirm whether certain theories specially aiming at the Taiwanese ESCM market's growth in the next few years is exactly what is predicted in the existing literature. By using multiple questions, the researcher is capable of finding out whether they are true or false. This is very important because the researcher's hypotheses are fundamentally rooted in these theories (Nolan & Putten,2007). If they turn out to be proven true, the research would be a success, and the more possibility of contributing to the improved practice for other Taiwanese companies to tackle future challenges and opportunities.

In addition to the first hand data, there will also be secondary data, whose functions are supplementary. In other words, there is a need to include statistics about market growth, conditions and trends presented by previous research (Mostafa et al, 2011). Therefore, not every collection of the statistics are about company financial performance. Other data such as output volume, sales figures and market share in Taiwan's ESCM industry are equally important. The majority of this type of data can be found on company annual reports, business journals and internet websites devoted to ESCM dealings in Taiwan. In order to improve the reliability of the secondary data, they will be cross-examined between at least two journals. The same would also be done to the data found on websites.?

The main part of the procedures is determined by the research approach, which is the mixed method. That is, on the one hand there is the quantitative procedure and on the other hand the qualitative procedure. Howe (2009) recommended researchers could follow the quantitative procedure first as a starting point, in which the analysis can select the meaningful samples to describe the patterns of the subjects. In the case of this research, this part of the procedure will allow the researcher to select 20 Taiwanese ESCM companies to describe the models of their financial and management methods. This is why the diagrams will be used to directly illustrate the relationship between the aforementioned patterns and the performance indicators of Taiwanese ESCM market.

According to Hoadley (2004), the Taiwan ESCM Industry report provides the up-to-date data about these companies. Thus, there is a saving in cost and energy for the other part of the analysis. However, it is found that in the industry reports the sources for investigate the Taiwanese ESCM companies' behaviors are limited due to some reasons. It is not completely sufficient to reveal the complexity of the financial and management models in terms of the long-term performance and how it impacts on the ESCM market in Asia Pacific. By contrast, the qualitative procedure follows that of the quantitative in order to explain the intricate relations between the companies and the market, such as how they have taken to a particular investment model. Tasks like this could only be adequately accomplished through the qualitative analysis.?

Therefore, the qualitative method serves as the leading procedure in order to minimize the risk of having conflicts with the quantitative paradigm. To some degree, the conflicts pose some challenge to the balance of data analysis. It calls for some effort in the phase III where data management and input are done. Collis & Hussey (2009) suggest using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) as an effective way to avoid the clash of quantitative and qualitative data. At least, the qualitative data could be integrated into the analysis section in a balanced fashion. Indeed, MCA is a necessary procedure because it provides an opportunity to include a?section to describe the relation of the ESCM industry as a backdrop. This enables the questionnaire data and interview feedback to be dissected from the whole and separated angles.

It should be noted that because there is no any form of preset to reveal the distribution of the coefficients, the analysis of the interview can only be enhanced by the use of multiple correspondence. At least, the companies' behaviors and attitudes toward their own investment and management models can be deepened (Remenyi et al, 2003). The researcher thus considered the data from the industry reports not just for reference purpose, but also to effectively simplify the primary data. That said, there are two other procedures are incorporated in the process--factor analysis and regression analysis. Because the variables involved are distributed normally, it requires multiple correspondence analysis.

As for the respondent selection procedure, the respondents are between 27 and 40 years old who are native Taiwanese. They have been invited to participate for the purpose of providing suggestions to not only improve their own companies' financial and management performances, but also for the sustainability of the industry. Their depth of experience varies because some of them have worked in big companies and the other only in small ones. In order to make sure their experiences are not a barrier to collecting the data according to planned schedule, the researcher imposed a position criteria, which is that they must have some time in their career worked as a senior manager before.

15 Oct 2021