3. Method
3.1. Population
The population comprises Spanish organic-olive-oil production
firms with at least a minimum of ICT resources, in other words, firms
that have a website. The starting point was all the firms in Spain that
market organic olive oil, 195 firms according to the list available from
the webpage of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and the Environment.
An Internet search for the firms on this list identified which of them had
a website of their own (127 firms). This study did not consider firms
without an active Internet presence because the purpose of the study
is to verify the relationship between ICT use and export. According to
Meroño, Arcas, and Soto (2007), firms with active Internet presence
are those that have a homesite/webpage.
To obtain the necessary information, firm managers answered telephone
interviews (99 managers answered). The study ruled out firms
that provided incomplete data, resulting in a final sample size of 94
firms throughout Spain (see the Annex for information on the data).