A qualitative and exploratory research design was undertaken in order to investigate the level of master data quality by the focal company (Stake, 2000). The research method consisted of ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews, because the investigated data are relatively unstructured and analysis of them involves explicit interpretation (Silverman, 2005). Using semi-structured interview protocols gave the interviewer the flexibility to focus on what the company believed was the most important problems as regards their current level of data quality. In terms of data coding, within case analysis was used as a means to structure, reduce and make sense of the data collected (Miles & Hubermann, 1994)