Five years ago I began my quest to explain the survival of small hotels in remote parts of rural Scotland. Not only did this provide new insights into small hotel survival but it has also identified fundamental survival mechanisms for many small businesses operating in the service sector of the economy. I have called this the "Familial Economic Unit". Although at the outset my main objective was to achieve a greater understanding of small business survival I believe that the main contribution of this thesis is the creation of a more satisfactory methodology for the analysis and interpretation of different types of qualitative data. This methodology I have named "The Qualitative Coding Matrix".