A total of 400 microbrewery principals or former principals of defunct microbrewery operations were selected for the research sample. Of these 400 subjects selected, 253 were principals of ongoing microbreweries, while 147 were former principals of defunct microbrewery operations. The rate of return of completed and usable survey questionnaires was higher among principals of ongoing operations than among former principals of defunct operations. A total of 210 principals (83 percent) of ongoing operations returned completed and usable survey questionnaires, while a total of 99 former principals (67 percent) of defunct operations returned completed and usable survey questionnaires. The resulting total sample size was 309 subjects.
Although it had been expected that principals of ongoing operations would respond at a rate higher than that of former principals of defunct operations, the actual rates of return for each group was higher than had been anticipated. The mean actual binomial percentage distribution of responses was approximately 75/25 instead of the projected 50/50. Thus, the actual sample size of 309 continued to provide the expected 95 percent confidence sampling error (Babbie, 1997).
Three research questions were originally formulate for this project. Subsequently to the completion of the literature review, the research questions were revised. In the end, two research questions were investigated. These research questions were as follows:
1. What factors characterize a successful microbrewery operation?
2. Does the relative importance of the factors that characterize a successful microbrewery operation vary in relation to segment of the microbrewery sub-segment of the beer industry?
A total of 18 factors that could be expected to be important to microbrewery operations were identified through the conduct of the literature review. It was hypothesized that these factors would be evaluated as being impor...