## 4 Research Methodology and Data Collection  
The population for this study was based on manufacturing companies that are active in Northern Greece in the peripheral districts of Macedonia and Thrace. The questionnaire was sent via e-mail to several companies the list of which was obtained from ICAP's Greek Financial Directory [34], volume 1: industry, which includes detailed listings of manufacturing enterprises--public and private, Greek and multinational--which are active--producing--in Greece. Companies that were listed as \"very small\" according to ICAP's directory [34] were excluded from the study as it was considered highly unlikely to have implemented ISs to support their operations. The questionnaire was sent in a total of 184 companies and 96 of them responded by the end of January 2019. In order to achieve the maximum response rate, the survey instrument was structured as a short questionnaire [35] with a total of 15 questions--13 of which were closed-end questions, while the last two of them were open questions. The first two questions were addressed to all respondents. Specifically, the second one's objective was to determine whether the company uses information systems (IS) or not. Those responding negatively to that question were instructed to proceed to the tenth question the objective of which was to determine the reasons that prevent the companies from investing in IS. The rest of the respondents had to follow the natural course of the questionnaire. The penultimate question was asking the respondents to specify their job title. Finally, the last question was asking about their thoughts on IS and supply chain (SC) in Greek industry. The survey instrument was developed based on the extensive review of the current literature, which was delineated in Section 3. The questionnaire was pre-tested on a pilot sample of five experts regarding IS to assess its clarity, comprehensiveness, and overall suitability. After completing the necessary amendments in November 2018, the questionnaire was sent electronically to 184 manufacturing enterprises, which were invited to fill it out on the web. An accompanying cover letter described briefly the research project and provided assurance that the information obtained from participating companies will be treated as confidential. Most of the e-mail addresses were found in the ICAP's directory [34]. Few other email addresses were found on the General Commercial Registry's site [36], as well as, the Exporters' Association of Northern Greece's site [37]. All the companies--whether we had found the email addresses or not--were contacted by phone to verify or be given the e-mail addresses (so as to send them the questionnaire) but also to inform them about the research. In order to increase the response rate, three weeks after the first invitation the questionnaire was emailed again to all those companies that had not responded. Furthermore, another email was sent after Christmas holidays that was followed by phone contact. In total of 184 companies that were contacted, 96 were returned by the end of January 2019. Returned questionnaires underwent strict checks to ensure completeness and consistency. The whole number of them that was answered was found to be valid and usable for further analysis, which puts the overall response rate to 52.17%. The sample was also checked for representativeness with respect to the industry sector and also the district they facilitate. In both instances the X\({}^{2}\) goodness-of-fit test shows that the sectorial or the district representation of the sample does not differ significantly from that observed in the total population of manufacturing enterprises in Northern Greece. The \(p\)-value of the test (minimal significance level for rejection of the null hypothesis) was 0.813 for the sectorial representativeness and 0.717 for the district representativeness, respectively [38]. The questionnaire was also tested with the Cronbach Alpha method for its reliability.