The international journal of tourism research tập 12, số 05, 2010 09 + 10

This paper argues that when the overall tourism research study involves the use of mixed methods, an initial exploratory stage conducted as part of a sequential research process, re

This paper explores city break tourism and, in

particular, the distinctive characteristics of this

form of travel The city break is examined and

compared with other types of trips The

research follows a sequential mixed methods

approach involving both a visitor survey and

in-depth interviews The fi ndings show the

international city break trip to have a number

of distinctive characteristics These are

summarised into fi ve main areas

(5 Ds) — duration, distance, date fl exibility,

discretionary nature and destination travel

party These distinguishing features provide a

useful insight into one of the most important

yet least examined travel segments in tourism

research Copyright © 2009 John Wiley &

Sons, Ltd.

Received 1 April 2009; Revised 30 October 2009; Accepted 2

November 2009

Keywords: city break, trip characteristics,

secondary holiday, discretionary trip

INTRODUCTION

The focus on cities for leisure breaks,

par-ticularly international leisure breaks, has

become a contemporary travel

phenome-non that has resulted in the enhancement and

rejuvenation of many urban areas throughout Europe Cities are moving centre stage, provid-ing a leisure experience that is both diverse and immediate According to IPK International’s European Travel Monitor, European city tourism grew by 20% in 2005, compared with

an increase of just 3% in sun and beach holidays (Freitag, 2006) However, while urban tourism

in general has received increased academic interest over the past two decades (e.g Buckley and Witt, 1985; Jansen-Verbeke, 1986; Ashworth and Tunbridge, 1990; Ashworth, 1992; Law,

1993, 2002; Page, 1995; Mazanec, 1997; Judd and Fainstein, 1999; Pearce, 2001; Hall and Page, 2002; Wöber, 2002 and Selby, 2004), analysis of the specifi c visitor groups that make up urban tourism demand has been less forthcoming With a few notable exceptions, little research specifi cally relating to city break travel currently exists Indeed, most of the commentary on the subject has tended to emanate from industry sources or consultant reports Little academic research explicitly addressing city break travel-lers and city break trip taking currently exists This indicates a signifi cant gap in the urban tourism knowledge base

CITY BREAKS — A DISTINCTIVE TYPE OF TRIP

A city break represents a distinctive type of holiday, one that Trew and Cockerell (2002, pp 86) defi ne as, ‘a short leisure trip to one city or town, with no overnight stay at any other des-tination during the trip.’ This defi nition impor-tantly highlights the ‘city only’ nature of the trips and provides a basis on which to segment such visitors Indeed, segmenting visitor markets along the lines of type of trip can be very effective, particularly for destination man-agement bodies Such breakdowns generally

Int J Tourism Res 12, 409–417 (2010)

Published online 2 December 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.760

Towards an Understanding of

International City Break Travel

Gerard Dunne1,*, Sheila Flanagan1 and Joan Buckley2

1 School of Hospitality Management and Tourism, Faculty of Tourism and Food, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland

2 Department of Management & Marketing, University College Cork, Ireland

*Correspondence to: Dr Gerard Dunne, Tourism

Mar-keting Lecturer, School of Hospitality Management and

Tourism, Faculty of Tourism and Food, Dublin Institute of

Technology, DIT, Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin 1, Ireland.

E-mail: gerard.dunne@dit.ie.

An earlier version of this paper was originally presented

by the author at the Tourism and Hospitality Research in

Ireland Conference, 16-17 June 2009, Dublin This was

also published as part of the Proceedings of

Contempo-rary Issues in Irish and Global Tourism and Hospitality.

offer potentially more valuable data than

traditional socio-demographic classifi cations

which, as Bieger and Laesser (2000, pp 56)

point out, are ‘increasingly less helpful for the

segmentation of guest groups.’ As researchers

begin to recognise the signifi cance of type of trip

in understanding visitor behaviour (Hudson,

1999; Bloy, 2000; Sung et al., 2001), it has become

more important to focus attention on the

char-acteristics of different holidays and highlight

the distinctiveness between them Sirakaya

and Woodside (2005) describe type of trip

(including aspects such as travel party and

duration) as being a crucial factor in people’s

travel decision process Examining the city

break trip in terms of its distinctive elements is

therefore both useful and important in the

context of urban tourism research

GROWTH OF CITY BREAK TRAVEL

There are a number of factors that can be

attrib-uted to the rising popularity of city break

holi-days in Europe First, the increased availability

of low cost air travel with its emphasis on short

haul, point-to-point journeys is undoubtedly a

signifi cant contributor This development has

made a wide range of city destinations

acces-sible at lower cost Second, there is the increased

tendency of Europeans to take additional but

shorter holidays This is an important

charac-teristic according to Trew and Cockerell (2002)

who point out that in some European

coun-tries, the overall leisure intensity — i.e the

proportion of the population travelling at least

once a year — is reaching a ceiling At the same

time, the total number of trips taken per market

continues to grow, as people opt for two or

more trips a year in place of, or in addition to,

their main annual holiday

Another reason for the growth relates to

people’s changing perception of cities as travel

destinations For contemporary travellers, the

city has increasingly become viewed as, not

just an entry, exit, or transit point, but a desired

destination in its own right

Finally, the increasing role of the Internet in

the travel decision-making process has also

contributed greatly to the city break

phenom-enon The ease with which people can access

information and make bookings online has

greatly facilitated this form of travel The

uncomplicated nature of most city break trips (the majority consisting of just two compo-nents, transport and accommodation) reduces the risk element commonly associated with booking holidays online

These factors have all contributed to the steady growth of ‘city only’ holidays and have resulted in city break travel delivering much welcome intra-regional traffi c at a time when Europe’s market share of global tourism is falling The city break phenomenon has helped

to popularise and regenerate several European cities, breathing new life into many belea-guered post-industrial urban economies It has also given rise to a number of ‘new’ city desti-nations that have emerged in response to the enthusiastic demand for additional city break locations Tallinn, Bratislava and Riga are among a new group of cities in recent years to have established themselves on the European city break travel map The value of this form

of tourism is not lost on the product providers within the cities themselves Accommodation suppliers in particular appreciate the propen-sity of city break travellers to book rooms at weekends, thus complementing the weekday occupancy that they traditionally receive from business travellers In addition, the all–year-round arrival pattern commonly associated with city breakers is seen as a signifi cant posi-tive factor for businesses that operate in such

a seasonal industry

CONCERNS IN RELATION TO CITY BREAKS

The city break phenomenon, although generally welcomed by urban tourism destinations, has nonetheless received a measure of criticism from certain quarters in recent years Some of this relates to the type of tourists commonly attracted to this form of travel, particularly where low cost airlines are involved For example, in recent times, residents and home-owners of Deauville in Normandy tried to stop the arrival of cheap Ryanair fl ights from London, believing that such a development would encourage an infl ux of downmarket, short break travellers to their traditionally upmarket resort town Similar criticisms have also been raised in other destinations, particularly in a number of emerging Eastern European cities where stag

parties and other relatively invasive forms of

tourism account for a signifi cant proportion of

the city break traffi c

One of the most pressing issues relating to

city breaks concerns the impact the

phenome-non is having on regional and rural tourism

There is a fear in some quarters that popular

city destinations are ‘taking’ potential tourists

from more traditional non-urban holiday areas

This is certainly the case in Ireland where

sig-nifi cant dissatisfaction exists among regional

tourism bodies at the perceived loss of

busi-ness because of the increasing popularity of

Dublin city According to a report by the Irish

Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) on

visitor distribution in Ireland, between 2000

and 2005, the number of nights spent by

inter-national holidaymakers in Dublin increased by

39%, while the number of bednights spent in

the rest of the country declined by almost 11%

(ITIC, 2006) This highlights a fundamental

change in the spatial spread of visitors in

Ireland and one which is clearly worrying the

country’s tourism authorities However, a

crit-ical question seems to be whether or not cities

are actually ‘taking’ visitors from other regions,

or whether it is just a case of fewer people

wishing to visit rural or regional destinations

Another criticism commonly levelled at city

break travel relates to the green issue Signifi

-cant attention is now being focused on airlines,

particularly low cost carriers, in terms of their

contribution to carbon emissions globally

Non-essential, supplemental trips such as city

breaks are increasingly being disapproved of

by a growing environmental lobby As

govern-ments begin to levy green taxes on the

trans-port sector, and as people become increasingly

aware of their carbon footprint, it will be

inter-esting to see if this has an impact on the demand

for city break travel

METHODS

In examining the distinctiveness of the

interna-tional city break market to Dublin, it was

decided to use a combination of quantitative

and qualitative methods Within the combined

methods design, a sequential triangulation

approach, as outlined by Miller and Crabtree

(1994), was considered particularly suitable

This consists of conducting two phases to the

research project, with the results of the fi rst phase essential for the planning of the next A quantitative study was undertaken fi rst (Phase One), which provided essential data in relation

to the characteristics of city break visitors and their trips, in addition to information neces-sary to carry out the second phase Phase Two involved an in-depth qualitative analysis that examined aspects of city break visitor’s con-sumer behaviour Both phases combine to provide a unique insight into city break travel characteristics and behaviour

Phase One involved a face to face survey carried out in Dublin where 1000 overseas visi-tors were intercepted over a 12-month period

at locations across the city centre From this sample, two main visitor cohorts were identi-

fi ed and separated These were city break

holidaymakers (n = 379) and non-city break

holidaymakers (n = 416) The former were defi ned as leisure visitors who were visiting the city only The latter consisted of leisure visitors who were visiting Dublin as part of a wider holiday (i.e the city was just one part of their trip)

Having isolated both visitor segments, it was possible to carry out a comparative analy-sis This proved very useful in identifying dis-tinctive characteristics and features of the city break market It should be noted that only commercial city breaks were considered; there-fore, people visiting family and friends were not included In addition, only those who visited the city for the entirety of their trip were deemed to be city breakers (as per Trew and Cockerell’s defi nition)

Phase Two consisted of 40 in-depth views with city break visitors to Dublin The purpose of this phase was to uncover insights from ‘thick descriptions,’ in the visitors’ own words, in relation to their travel behaviour These thick descriptions, as outlined by Geertz (1973), consist of detailed information about the process being examined from the view-points of the participants in the process Drawing on data from Phase One, it was pos-sible to develop an accurate sampling frame based on the characteristics of city break visi-tors to Dublin The interviews were carried out

inter-at three locinter-ations around the city, inter-at different times of the year and at different times of the week Interviews lasted between 25 minutes

and 1 hour, and were recorded They were

later transcribed and subsequently analysed

using a qualitative approach involving data

reduction, data display and conclusion

drawing/verifi cation, as outlined by Miles and

Huberman (1994 ) From this, a number of

themes connected to people’s travel behaviour

emerged The detailed information collected

from the interviews consisted of data not just

relating to the interviewee’s city break but also

to their last main holiday This allowed direct

comparisons to be made in relation to people’s

wider trip-taking behaviour

In analysing the results from both phases of

the research, a number of distinctive features

of city break travel became apparent These

were characteristics that emerged from both

the quantitative and qualitative data sets and

were categorised into fi ve main areas These

are conveniently referred to as the 5 Ds of city

break travel Although primarily relating to

the situation in Dublin, they are refl ective of

city break travel in a wider context also

THE 5 Ds OF CITY BREAK TRAVEL

The fi ve characteristics (5 Ds) will now be

dis-cussed in an effort to shed light on the factors

that make city break trips distinctive as a

type of holiday The fi ve specifi c features are:

Duration, Distance, Discretionary nature, Date

fl exibility and Destination travel party.

Duration

The fi rst distinctive feature relates to the length

of the trip The fi ndings in this research support

the common view (Law, 2002; Trew and

Cock-erell, 2002) that city breaks generally consist of

short-stay trips The results from Phase One

show how city break visitors stay for

noticea-bly shorter periods compared with other

leisure tourists — 55% stated their trip

con-sisted of three nights or less — compared with

just 6% for non-city break holidaymakers

However, it would be wrong to assume that

all city breaks are short breaks; clearly they are

not Some people come on city based holidays

for longer durations, and indeed, there is

evi-dence to suggest that longer city break trips are

growing faster than average (Trew and

Cock-erell, 2002) However, in general, the fi ndings

show most city breaks being short, usually three nights or less The results point to three main explanations for this First, city breaks tend to be secondary trips, often supplement-ing a person’s main holiday In this regard, they tend to be of a shorter duration as they are complementing rather than replacing a

bigger trip Second, as Burtenshaw et al (1991)

and Law (1993) point out, many people are able to see and experience what they want, in most cities, in a few days This was confi rmed

in the Phase Two interviews where a number

of people, although generally indicating their approval with Dublin as a destination, also pointed out that a few days or a weekend in the city was adequate to satisfy their city break requirements

It’s a nice city and we’ve really enjoyed it but in the end of the day the three days

is enough, we’ve seen what we wanted to see (James, London)

This was echoed by people who visited the city for concerts or sports games which, by their nature, tend to be short-term events The third reason relates to the international trend towards shorter, but more frequent leisure trips This trend has been one of the most signifi cant devel-opments in European travel in recent years, and the city break phenomenon is testimony to this Cities, as destinations, lend themselves easily to short break travel For time-pressed travellers, cities can be reached directly, reducing or elimi-nating transfer issues commonly associated with longer holidays In addition, attractions and amenities are generally clustered or located close together, resulting in little time spent moving around the destination Thus, for many people, cities represent the ideal short break holiday destination

Distance

The second distinctive characteristic relates to the distance people travel to take such holi-days City break visitors tend to come mostly from nearby source markets This fact is very much evident in Dublin where 80% of the city break market comes from Britain, a statistic that is much higher than the overall fi gure for British holidaymakers into Dublin (50%) Urban tourism demand in many other

European cities follows a similar trend Because

of the limited duration of most city break trips

people don’t like to spend much time getting

to and from the destination The increased

availability of low cost point-to-point fl ights

has improved matters greatly in this regard

Page (2002) refers to the development of

regional air services outside the main national

gateways as having contributed signifi cantly

to the rise of secondary urban trips Cheap

fre-quent access from a range of airports in

neigh-bouring markets has been a key feature of most

city break destinations For example, the

number of air routes into Dublin is highest

from Britain Ryanair alone fl ies to 17 different

British airports from Dublin The impact of this

cheap air access is refl ected in the holiday

arrivals statistics, which show growth in air

travel to Dublin far exceeding that of ferry

services As Table 1 shows, there has been a

signifi cant shift in mode of entry by British

visitors over the period of 1997 to 2007 The

fi gures highlight a swing of 36% from sea to

air transport Low cost airlines have had a

huge infl uence on this shift

Although I know the taxes bring it up but still it’s amazing (Ruth, Glasgow)

Discretionary nature

Another signifi cant feature of city breaks is the discretionary nature of the trips During the visitor interviews, respondents were asked about their trip-taking patterns in the previous year in order to examine how the city break

fi tted in with other trips (if any) they had taken The fi ndings showed that people had generally taken the city break as an additional trip to their main holiday There were only a few cases where the Dublin city break was con-sidered the principal, or indeed only, holiday

of the year This supports Page’s (2002, pp 121) assertion that ‘many urban holiday trips are secondary trips, complementing the tradi-tional summer-long annual holidays which are coastal-based.’ In most cases, the trip was viewed as a discretionary break, and for some,

an opportunistic one This is refl ected in the short decision time that was evident with many

of the trips The survey results show almost 60% of city breakers booked their accommo-dation less than 4 weeks before their trip compared with 37% of non-city break holidaymakers, indicating what Swarbrooke and Horner (2007, p 77) note as ‘the increasing popularity of last minute purchases of tourism products.’ For most people, city breaks were conceived and acted on in a relatively short period of time, with the Internet playing a signifi cant role in this behaviour

The infl uence of situational factors was also found to contribute to the discretionary nature

of city break trip taking These are factors which Belk (1975, pp 158) refers to as ‘particu-lar to a time and place of observation and which have a demonstrable and systematic effect on current behaviour.’ Evidence from the interviews shows that the genesis of many city break ideas can be traced to particular circumstances that people faced, or situations that arose in people’s lives These proved to

be quite diverse; however, all had a similar outcome, in that, taking a city break was con-sidered an appropriate response to the particu-lar situation they faced For example, one interviewee explained how a family bereave-ment was the catalyst for his trip to Dublin:

Table 1 Route of entry % from Britain (2007 versus

1997)

1997 (%) 2007 (%) % change

Source: Fáilte Ireland Market Trends (Britain)

Clearly for time-pressed city break visitors,

fast, direct air access is a hugely attractive

option In Dublin’s case, this is refl ected in the

large number of city breakers coming from

Britain For these visitors, Dublin represented

one of the most easily accessible overseas city

destinations available to them

It was cheaper to come here than what it

is to go to my work, and it was quicker I

mean it takes me an hour-and-a-half to go

to my work, whereas I mean I couldn’t

believe it, it was 50 minutes We left home

at 7 a.m in the morning and arrived here

at 7.52 a.m I mean it’s incredible, I couldn’t

believe it for 70p each way — I mean that’s

much less than I pay going to work

Well to tell you the truth it came about

because I lost my brother a couple of weeks

ago I just needed to get away, clear my

head like I went to a travel agent and just

said I need to get away for a couple of

days — and so she suggested here

In some cases, the city break was organised by a

third party, and as such, the decision often came

down to a simple question: ‘do I join this trip or

not?’ Once this decision was made, respondents

often had very little other input into the trip,

except to participate This usually differed from

people’s main holiday situation where the initial

generic decision of whether or not to take a trip

was, in many cases, already made For most

people, the main holiday was an annual ritual,

therefore the decision-making tended to focus

less on whether to go and more on where to go By

contrast, city breaks were usually less

predeter-mined and as such the decision-making was

more discretionary in nature The decision

process did not tend to follow distinctive stages

as commonly outlined in the tourism literature

For example, the conventional view is that people

fi rst decide on whether or not to take a trip — what

Hodgson (1983) calls fi rst order questions — and

then subsequently choose what kind of trip to

take (second order questions) However, for

many city breakers, these decisions were made

concurrently In other words, people often came

upon a good city break deal or were introduced

to one and decided to ‘go for it,’ and as such were

making fi rst and second order decisions

simultaneously

I saw the special offer for the fl ight and

that I suppose started me thinking And

then because we had free time and no real

commitments we decided why not (Fred,

Bristol)

This refl ects impulsive or opportunistic

deci-sion-making behaviour that is very much

linked to the discretionary nature of the trips

It also shows the strength of special offers and

deals when discovered by people at particular

times Advertisements for cheap fl ights, in

par-ticular, were found to stimulate demand in a

number of cases

Date fl exibility

The fourth distinctive feature of city break

travel relates to the lack of seasonal bias

associated with the trips Table 2 shows fi ings from the survey that highlight the differ-ence in arrival patterns between city break and non-city break visitors to Dublin

nd-Such a demand pattern can be partly

attrib-uted to what Burtenshaw et al (1991) point out

as the relatively minor role weather plays in city-based tourism The fi ndings show that 17% of city breakers to Dublin arrived during winter months compared with just 4% of non-city break holidaymakers However, besides weather, the disparity in arrival patterns can also be attributed to other factors For example, the secondary nature of city breaks means most are taken outside of peak periods Some-times these trips are centred around events such as concerts, sports games and exhibitions These are generally spread throughout the year and as such the city break visitors who attend them contribute to the development of

a year-round city destination

Yes, I suppose the concert was the main reason for coming (to Dublin), we are big fans and we did not want to miss it (Christina, Rotterdam)

This non-seasonal demand pattern is a crucial feature and one that makes city breakers an attractive market for urban tourism businesses

Destination travel party

The fi nal characteristic of city break travel cerns the composition of the travelling unit One of the most interesting fi ndings in this regard was the small number of travel parties that included children The survey results show most people travelled to Dublin with either a spouse/partner (60%) or a group of friends (19%) in contrast to just 13% visiting

con-Table 2 Timing of visit by type of holidaymaker

% of city break holidaymaker

(n = 379)

% of non-city break holidaymaker

with their family (including children) These

results concur with previous studies which

show a high proportion of urban tourists travel

without children (Flanagan and Dunne, 2005;

British Tourist Authority and English Tourist

Board, 1988; Trinity Research, 1989) Three

main factors emerged as the principal reasons

why children are not well represented in city

break travel parties First, a high proportion of

city breakers did not have children The fi

nd-ings show that many of the groups were made

up of single people travelling together (friends,

affi nity groups, stag/hen parties, etc), or

couples who either did not have children or

whose children had left home (empty nesters)

For all these people, ease of mobility was a key

factor in their choice of trip They were not tied

to the school calendar and as such were more

fl exible with their travel plans This allowed

them to avail of special travel offers which

tend to be more plentiful and fi nancially

rewarding during school term Childless

trav-ellers can also usually take trips without a lot

of pre planning, which means they can often

make decisions more speedily and

spontane-ously For such people, city breaks represent a

very attractive travel option

The second reason relates to people who had

children at home, but who used the city break

trip to escape the stresses and pressures of

parenting This was particularly evident in the

interviews where a number of couples described

their trip to Dublin as a chance to take a break

from their children

We have a young son — he’s one and a

half and he’s into everything at the

moment Jane’s mother took him for these

few days It’s great to just get the break

(Brian, Nottingham)

A city break was seen as ideal in many ways

for this purpose — the short stay nature of the

trips along with the ease of access made

travel-ling easier in terms of arranging childminding

Interestingly, these people saw the city break

as an adult-focused holiday centred on

them-selves By contrast, the main holiday was seen

as a chance to spend time with their

children

The third reason, for the lack of children,

relates to the child-unfriendly perception of

cities as destinations A few of the interviewees commented on the lack of things to do for kids

in Dublin or the diffi culty in keeping them amused, while others claimed they would never bring their children to a city for a holiday

CONCLUSIONDistinguishing between the types of trips people take can be a very useful exercise for tourism researchers Such an approach focuses

on the nature of the trip — its principal acteristics — and as such offers potentially more valuable visitor behaviour data than other approaches By studying the different characteristics of various holidays, a greater understanding of trip-taking behaviour is pos-sible Certainly this is the case with city breaks where, up to now, little empirical data in rela-tion to the nature of these trips has existed As the changing structure of trip taking by Euro-peans continues to infl uence the growth of city breaks, the need for up to date informa-tion on this visitor market has become more pressing This study has shown that the international city break trip has a number of distinguishing characteristics These are encap-

char-sulated in fi ve main features (5 Ds), duration,

distance, date fl exibility, discretionary nature and destination travel party The fi ndings in this

regard show city break trips to be generally short in duration (usually less than three nights) involving mostly short haul fl ights from neighbouring countries In addition, they tend to be secondary trips that people often use to supplement a main holiday They are also likely to be taken throughout the year and are mostly made up of couples or groups of friends

Uncovering these characteristics provides a better understanding of city break trips and in particular their distinctiveness compared with other types of holidays The ability of city breaks to provide a quick, short escape from the routine of daily life shows them to be ful-

fi lling a signifi cant role in today’s cash rich, time poor society In addition, the fi ndings highlight some interesting themes in relation

to the role of a holiday — particularly in terms

of its social function For example, some trips were viewed as opportunities to build on

personal relationships, often between partners,

while others provided a more hedonistic

func-tion in which the holiday was viewed as a

chance to regress or behave in a manner that

would be socially out of character in the home

environment Such differences are interesting

to observe and highlight the value of viewing

holiday-taking in its wider social context

Looking forward, it is not certain if cities will

continue to enjoy the appeal they do today

Given the increasingly negative economic

environment that tourism faces, it will be

inter-esting to see if secondary trips such as city

breaks manage to sustain the type of

popular-ity they have experienced up to now Further

research into this area would be very useful It

would be particularly benefi cial to see how

people’s perception of discretionary leisure

travel changes in recessionary times For

example, will city breaks come to be viewed as

an unnecessary luxury in harder economic

times or is it possible that people may turn to

such trips as a cheaper alternative to their main

holiday? In order to remain competitive in the

years ahead, city tourism suppliers will need

to have a clear understanding of this important

visitor group and be able to respond to the

specifi c requirements they present For this,

comprehensive knowledge of city break

travel-lers and the trips they engage in will be

crucial

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This paper advances (i) propositions of

consumer behaviour theory in tourism via

storytelling theory and (ii) skills in

decoding elements and subtle details that

appear in ‘good stories’ versus not-so-good

stories within travel contexts The present

paper presents a set of iconic story symbols

for use in decoding stories and shows how

to use these tools for decoding

tourism-related narratives Practice using these

visual iconic symbols in decoding stories

achieves effective storytelling learning via

cognitive sculpting; that is, learning

improves from moving and arranging

(sculpting) potentially three-dimensional

story or electronically movable icons while

talking or writing narratives Copyright ©

2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 21 March 2009; Revised 3 November 2009; Accepted

9 November 2009

Keywords: storytelling; journey; protagonist;

blocks; archetype; antagonist; rebel

INTRODUCTION

Consumers’ thoughts and actions

involving tourism behaviour frequently

include elements of ‘good stories’

(McKee, 2003) Elements in good stories include

a protagonist who experiences an awaking that

he or she must make a journey to achieve a

goal; one or more exciting incidents occur in a good story; confl icts arise (that frequently include antagonists, ‘dark forces’); the protagonist perceives an epiphany — a revelation in a climatic moment in the story; the protagonist experiences several unique and important contexts/situations

Travel protagonists’ stories (e.g a tourist reporting on his or her own travel plans and actions) are found in diaries, blogs and oral reports of their plans and actions involving leaving home, going on a journey, reaching one or more destinations and returning home These stories frequently contain antagonists in the form of bad weather, earthquakes, thieves, surly waiters and bad experiences with travel companions — and personal blocks such as feelings of failure, inability to perform trip-related activities due to a lack of skill or ill health Such reports sometimes include reviews about the protagonists’ life at home, problems with children, spouses, and lovers, and doubts about why they made or are making the trip The relevant literature includes advances in theory and case research gestalt studies of consumers’ own reports of their thoughts and actions covering all phases relating to planning, during the trip and returning home (e.g Wood-

side and MacDonald, 1994; Woodside et al.,

2007a,2007b; Woodside and Martin, 2008).Deep understanding of the motivations, behaviour and outcomes relating to tourism is possible from applying storytelling theory to decode the meanings underlying tourists’ narrative reports of their trips This view is the central proposition and unique contribution of the present paper This paper describes the core propositions and illustrates applications

of useful tools for travel researchers to apply for decoding both specifi c scenarios and actions

in travel stories, as well as the gestalt meaning

of such stories — both for the protagonist as

Int J Tourism Res 12, 418–431 (2010)

Published online 2 December 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.762

Advancing Consumer Behaviour Theory

in Tourism via Visual Narrative Art

Arch G Woodside1,* and Carol M Megehee2,†

1 Marketing Department, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA

2 Department of Management, Marketing and Law, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, South Carolina, USA

*Correspondence to: Professor A G Woodside, PhD,

Marketing Department, Boston College, 450 Fulton Hall,

Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.

E-mail: woodsiar@bc.edu

† Current address: Department of Management and

Mar-keting, Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana.

well as for tourism management executives

(TMEs) The paper serves to provide theory

and tools for TMEs to enable their adoption of

story director roles to assist protagonists (i.e

tourists) to enact travel stories successfully (cf

Arnould and Price, 2003) Given that tourists

tell themselves and others stories about their

trips and consider future travel to alternative

destinations as story enactments (e.g

adventures), effective tourism management

needs to involve directing scenes, acts and

actions that fulfi l the script of the story, the

story’s ‘evaluative slope’ (Gergen and Gergen,

1988) and possibly offer a few twists and turns

for the tourist to experience and expand upon

in retelling her or his trip experiences

Evaluative slope refers to the emotional

peaks and valleys a protagonist experiences

while engaging in a story enactment or a

retelling of a story Low share of visitors who

return to a given destination in a number of

instances may follow from the failure to create

relatively high emotional peaks for visitors to

experience For example, while Americans and

Japanese visitors report enjoying the tranquility

of visiting Prince Edward Island (PEI; Canada’s

smallest province), few report intentions to

visit PEI again Successfully promoting return

visits by members of these two tourist segments

by PEI likely requires resolving the paradox of

designing in ‘exciting tranquility’ Research

using storytelling theory and long interviews

of PEI visitors inform these conclusions (see

Woodside and Martin, 2008)

The present paper briefl y examines the

principles of storytelling Second, the paper

summarizes the propositions of ‘good

storytelling’ by a leading storytelling trainer

(McKee, 2003) Third, the paper proposes and

describes the use of cognitive sculpting (CS)

(Doyle and Sims, 2002) tools — a set of visual

iconic symbols that can be arranged (i.e sculpt)

to represent action and actors in stories — for

improving interpretations and sensemaking of

stories Fourth, the paper illustrates visual

narrative art (similar but unique from visual

schema; see Gibbs et al., 2004) via CS of a story

and offers principles for creating such visual

art renderings of stories; image schema are

‘dynamic spatial patterns’ that are ‘more

abstract than ordinary visual mental images’

and of an enduring nature, being ‘permanent

properties of embodied experience’ (Gibbs

et al., 2004, pp 1192–1193), whereas visual

narrative art shows events in scenes and acts

in a temporal dimension usually in the sequence including a beginning, middle and end Fifth, the paper includes conclusions and limitations and proposes a series of sensemaking tests on the value of visual tools for increasing storytelling sensemaking skills for future research

PRINCIPLES OF STORYTELLING BEHAVIOUR

The work of several scholars in consumer behaviour (e.g Hirschman, 1986; Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994; Padgett and Allen, 1997; Adaval and Wyer, 1998; Holt, 2003, 2004; Holt and Thompson, 2004; Laing and Crouch, 2009) and in related fi elds of human inquiry and learning (Mitroff and Kilmann, 1976; Schank and Abelson, 1977; Bruner, 1990; Schank, 1990,

1999, 2005) support the view that ‘ people think narratively rather than argumentatively

or paradigmatically’ (Weick, 1995, p 127; see also Wells, 1988, Weick, 1995, Hiltunen, 2002 and McKee, 2003) Stories and storytelling are central to achieving a deep understanding of consumer psychology (cf Escalas and Stern, 2003; Holt, 2003, 2004)

‘Human memory is story-based’ (Schank,

1999, p 12) is the fi rst principle of storytelling behaviour ‘Information is indexed, stored, and retrieved in the form of stories A story is useful because it comes with many indices (i.e., touch points to the lives of listeners/viewers

or to others that causes implicit and/or explicit awareness and emotional connection/under-standing in the minds of listeners/viewers Indices in stories can cause automatic (implicit) awareness, comprehension and empathy among listeners/viewers The concept of indices and constructing indices in stories are central to creating good stories These indices may be locations, decisions, actions, attitudes, quandaries, decisions, or conclusions “The more indices we have for a story that is being told, the more places the story can reside in memory Consequently, we are more likely to remember a story [versus a lecture] and to relate the story to experiences already in memory In other words, the more indices, the

greater the number of comparisons with prior

experiences and hence the greater the

learn-ing” ’ (Schank, 1999, p 11) The proposition

that indices in stories serve as touch points of

a story’s core message to the listener/viewer is

central to Escalas’ (2004) proposal that

narra-tive processing creates or enhances self-brand

connections in consumer theory because people

generally interpret the meaning of their

experiences by fi tting their interpretations of

experiences into a story

Second, a substantial amount of information

stored in and retrieved from memory is

episodic — stories that include inciting

incidents, experiences, outcomes/evaluations

and summaries/nuances of person-to-person

and person-and-brand relationships within

specifi c contexts (see Schank, 1990; Fournier,

1998)

Third, retrieving, reliving or repeat watching

of stories results in what Aristotle (see Hiltunen,

2002) refers to as ‘proper pleasure’ — a

catharsis — that relates usefully to the work of

Holt (2003) and Jung (1916/1959): Watching,

retrieving and telling stories enables the learner

(sometimes with the assistance of the trainer

but not necessarily the protagonist) to

experience one or more archetypal myths An

archetype is an unconscious primary form, an

original pattern or prototype in the human

mind; archetypes are not learned or

acquired — they are with us from birth and are

as natural and embedded in us as our own

DNA; archetypes are collective unconscious

forces affecting beliefs, attitudes and behaviour

implicitly and/or explicitly (Jung, 1916/1959;

Wertime, 2002) Recognising archetypes takes

effort and insight by a consumer or researcher

studying the consumer A catharsis is not a

given in any story or indeed any travel

experi-ence, nor does it simply come out of the blue

from reliving and retelling of stories Aristotle

(in Butcher, 1961) actually describes a slow

unfolding of tragedy and catastrophe that

then leads to the moment of realisation and

release — the ‘hamatea’ — or experience of

catharsis Catharsis is usually experienced by

the audience/reader, not by the protagonist

unless a cathartic surfacing has been written

into the story as part of its plot The

protago-nist may fail completely to understand her

own hubris and, not infrequently, will die in

that state of self-delusion A tragedy or trophe has to be severe for a cathartic process

catas-to be warranted (e.g the young catas-tourist shot in the hotel in Mumbai and subsequently rescued) Hopefully, relatively few instances of this magnitude occur in tourism

Fourth, specifi c brands and products often play pivotal roles (e.g destinations and

locations-events in destinations) enable consumers to achieve the proper pleasure that results in a consumer mentally and/or physically enacting a specifi c archetype — and reliving the experience by periodically retelling

a given story The brand-consumer storytelling and pleasure outcome builds on Nataraajan and Bagozzi’s (2000, p 10) idea ‘that people need help in fi nding what makes them happy, and this is where marketing comes in’ Happiness can be an outcome that brands enable consumers to achieve via story enactments with specifi c archetypal plots.Fifth, individuals seek clarity, to make sense

of prior conversations, events and outcomes from others and themselves by telling stories

‘How do I know what I think until I hear what

I say?’ (Weick, 1995) partly summarizes this proposition Story repetition is often a plea for clarity that may be achievable in part by recognising that the drama in the story is one illustration of one or more specifi c archetypes (e.g story of rebellion, Mother-of-Goodness, Little Trickster, Ultimate Strength, the Hero; see Wertime (2002) for the storylines for these and other archetypes) The above set

of propositions builds from the proposals of Escalas (2004), Holt (2003), Hiltunen (2002), Jung (1916/1959), Mark and Pearson (2001),

Wertime (2002) and Woodside et al (2007b).

These fi ve propositions help describe explicitly how products and brands enable archetype engagement The proposals here go deeper than Holt’s (2003, 2004) proposal that icons are encapsulated myths; the proposals in the present paper describe how consumers’ stories involving actions with brands and products provide a proper pleasure (Aristotle’s

Poetics, Butcher, 1961) that relates unconsciously

to one or more archetypes (Jung, 1916/1959) and helps consumers achieve deep satisfying levels of sensemaking

The retelling and reliving of stories can be experienced in many different ways, including

with unutterable boredom (i.e a bad story) or

re-traumatisation and catharsis Reaching

catharsis is a very complex process A confl

a-tion throughout text between a story’s

protag-onist and author or listener/viewer is likely to

occur in subjective personal introspections

(SPIs; see Holbrook, 1995; Woodside, 2003)

When a text is autobiographical, the author is

still the reader of the fi nished text, not the text

itself The protagonist does not have to be an

active agent in the story — a story’s enactment

may result in the reader experiencing a deep

understanding or catharsis while the

protago-nist in the story remains completely passive to

the end

Archetypes are not outcomes As Jung

(1916/1959) points out, archetypes are

poten-tially dangerous psychic forces that rarely, of

themselves, bring pleasure or fulfi lment It is

the process of engaging with the archetypes

that brings realisation and understanding

Listening, viewing and interpreting a story

may be distinctly unpleasant Several different

types of stories are told — a trip may be an

important event but not necessarily a great

experience

TELLING GOOD STORIES

McKee (2003) advocates that the best way to

persuade someone (student, friend or family

member) is by telling a compelling story ‘In a

story, you do not only weave a lot of

informa-tion into the telling but you also arouse your

listener’s emotions and energy Persuading

with a story is hard Any intelligent person can

sit down and make lists [for use in a lecture such

as writing “reason-why-to-buy advertising

copy”] It takes rationality but little creativity to

design an argument using conventional

rheto-ric But it demands vivid insight and

storytell-ing skill to present an idea that packs enough

power to be memorable If you can harness

imagination and the principles of a well-told

story, then you get people rising to their feet

amid thunderous applause instead of yawning

and ignoring you’ (McKee, 2003, p 52)

What are the principles of a well-told story?

A story expresses how and why life changes

A story includes a situation or context in which

life is relatively in balance or implied to be in

balance — you believe that you are happily married forevermore with a wife who loves you and a three-year-old daughter You expect your life will continue that way However, a story may begin with a terrible disaster and progress towards stability or some other kind

of resolution In his work, McKee is only describing one context of the structure of nar-rative Not all stories have dramatic fl ow — the chaos narrative, for instance, which constantly digs itself into an ever-deepening hole However, the story’s audience is likely to imagine that a prequel of balance existed before stories that open with a chaotic event

But then an event — screenwriters call this event the ‘inciting incident’ — throws life out

of balance in the shape of a new opportunity

or threat For example, an aunt in America offers her niece a trip to Paris to celebrate the niece’s sixteenth birthday (the full report of

this trip to Paris appears in Woodside et al

(2007b) The story goes to describe how, in an effort to restore balance, the protagonist’s sub-jective expectations attempts to cope with a new reality A good storyteller describes what

it is like to deal with these opposing forces, calling on the protagonist to dig deeper, work with scarce resources, make diffi cult decisions, take action despite risks and ultimately com-prehend new experiences

Great storytellers deal with fundamental confl icts between subjective expectation and cruel reality (McKee, 2003) The gist of the

Wizard of Oz story might come to mind here

Dorothy struggles against evil forces to win the right to return home; Dorothy’s struggles include accidentally killing the wicked witch who is attempting to kill Dorothy to get acquire Dorothy’s ruby slippers

Good storytelling displays the struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness The great irony of existence is that what makes life worth living does not come from the rosy side We would all rather be lotus eaters, but life will not allow it The energy to live comes from the dark side It comes from everything that makes us suffer As we struggle against these negative powers, we’re forced to live more deeply, more fully (McKee, 2003, p 53)

Scepticism is another principle of the

story-teller The sceptic understands the different

between text and subtext and always seeks to

learn what is really going on The sceptic

hunts for the truth beneath the surface of life,

knowing that the real thoughts and feelings of

institutions or individuals are unconscious and

unexpressed (cf Wilson, 2002) ‘The skeptic is

always looking behind the mask’ (McKee,

2003, p 54)

What questions should a story listener/

viewer ask in making sense of a story? Answers

to this question include asking who the

princi-pal protagonist is Also, what does this

pro-tagonist want in order to restore balance in his

or her life? ‘Desire is the blood of a story Desire

is not a shopping list but a core need that, if

satisfi ed, would stop the story in its tracks’

(McKee, 2003, p 55) Next, the story interpreter

should ask, what is keeping the protagonist

from achieving his or her desire? Forces within?

Doubt? Fear? Confusion? Personal confl icts

with friends, family, lovers? Social confl icts

arising from various institutions in society?

Not enough time to get things done?

Antago-nists come in the form of people, society, time,

space and every object in it, or any

combina-tion of these forces at once

Finally, the story sensemaker (i.e audience

member) asks, how does the protagonist decide

to act — and continue the action — in order to

achieve his or her desire in the face of these

antagonistic forces? The answer to this

ques-tion reveals truth about the protagonist —

be-cause the choices the protagonist makes under

pressure uncovers and reveals the truth to and

about the protagonist The protagonist comes

to learn his or her unconscious essence by

self-examination of his or her own behaviour

(Wilson, 2002)

CS FOR INTERPRETING STORIES

A cognitive sculpture resulting in visual

narrative art is creating and arrangement of

symbols to represent people, processes, time

periods and outcomes of a story (cf Doyle and

Sims, 2002) Since the objects in CS are moveable

they often become dramatized, and invested

with intention (e.g ‘the symbol representing a

world block does not really want to get in the

protagonist’s way’) CS is comparable in some ways with more familiar ways of dramatising methods such as role playing Despite its similarity with such a variety of techniques, Doyle and Sims (2002) argue that CS has a distinctive focus, feel and applicability of its own Although sculpting can involve smoothing and removing of rough spots and parts of a story, the emphasis here is on adding, changing and possibly deleting lines in communications and moving and arranging actions and contexts

in a storyline

A cognitive sculpture represents a gestalt visual interpretation of the entire story Figure 1 is a generalised theoretical cognitive sculpture of a story Note that the rebel or Anti-Hero archetype represents the protagonist

in Figure 1; other archetypal forces may substitute for the rebel protagonist depending

on the story Figure 1 is an extension of the Woodside and Megehee (2009) model

Woodside and Megehee (2009) describe a phase dynamics model using the cognitive artwork The phase dynamic model explicates propositions that are relevant in a good story (McKee, 2003) The propositions include the following points: (i) life for the protagonist is more or less in balance; (ii) a protagonist experiences an inciting incident that informs his or her need to go on a journey that takes the protagonist away from his or her everyday life; (iii) the protagonist encounters antagonists (human, animal and/or physical and climatic) during the journey and must overcome these antagonists to complete the journey; (iv) the protagonist experiences feelings of failure and feelings of success occur in different phases during the journey; (v) the protagonist experiences help during the journey; (vi) a catharsis occurs for the protagonist; and (vii) the story’s ending may include an interpretation

of what has happened and future events in the life of the protagonist; post-journey retelling of the story occurs to clarify the meaning of the story to the storyteller, to inform others and

to experience the pleasure of reliving the archetypal force that the story’s journey provides

Table 1 summarizes 12 archetypal forces that may appear in a story in the roles of protagonist, antagonist or help; Jung (1916/1959) provides and analyzes additional archetypes Woodside

Figur

et al (2007b) propose that stories express the

unconscious seeking and fulfi lment of one or

more archetypal forces This proposition is the

basis for marketers crafting stories that connect

their brands in the lives of customers For

example, without connecting his views to archetypal theory and research, Holt (2003,

p 43) proposes, ‘In America, the most potent myths are depictions of rebels’ For some consumers, the Anti-Hero, rebel, archetype

Table 1 Archetypes, story gists and brand examples

Ultimate Strength When an obstacle is there, it

must be overcome, strength must be proven in use

Timex — ‘It takes a licking and keeps ticking’

The Siren Power of attraction, linked with

the possibility of destruction

Allure by Chanel; Envy by Gucci

The Hero Fortitude, courage and victory; a

journey and transformation

Michael Jordan and Nike shoes; Joe DiMaggio and Mr Coffee; Power Puff Girls; Forrest GumpThe Anti-Hero Universal message of destruction

and attraction of evil; the bad dude

Heavy metal icons; Howard Stern; Jerry Springer; Oakland Raiders; Che Guevara; Harley-DavidsonThe Creator Creative inspiration and the

Curves — workout stores for women; Gillette’s Mach 2 razor; Porsche 911

The Powerbroker Authority, infl uence and

domination — the world’s leading ; the best ; number one

CNN; E F Hutton; Bill Gates; Microsoft

The Wise Old Man Experience, advice and heritage;

staying the test of time

Levi’s; Obi-Wan Kenobi

The Loyalist Trust, loyalty and reassurance Coca Cola and ‘Mean’ Joe Green

with boy of 12 TV commercial;

I Love Lucy; Friends TV sitcom

The Mother-of-Goodness Purity, nourishment and

motherly warmth

Just Juice; Ivory Soap; Tropicana Orange Juice; Aunt Jemima; Fairy Godmother; Witch of the East; Snow White

The Little Trickster Humor, non-conformity and the

element of surprise

Dennis the Menace; Bart Simpson;

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure;

becomes a key lifestyle driver and part of their

self-defi nition ‘Harley-Davidson has often

been cited as a brand that creates very strong

brand affi nity amongst its users One of the

reasons for this is that Harley has tapped into

a strong consumer desire to express an

alterna-tive side to their personalities For some users,

their Hog gives them a chance to play the part

of the renegade—to be a bad dude’ (Wertime,

2002, p 122) Thus, marketers ‘must learn to

target national contradictions instead of just

consumer segments, create myths that make

sense of confusing societal changes, and speak

with a rebel’s voice’ (Holt, 2003, p 43)

The story interpreter and story creator may

create additional symbols (e.g product

packages and brand badges) when cognitively

sculpting a story The symbols appearing in

Figure 1 and Table 1 are viewable usefully as

a starter’s toolkit for creating CS of stories The

main proposition concerning CS of stories is

that such visualising of verbal narratives

enriches and deepens interpretations of both

specifi c scenes and acts in the story as well as

the transformations and gestalt epiphanies

that the protagonist experiences by the end of

the story (cf Tufte, 1990) Such CS supports

and helps enable visual art and visual

thinking — the dominant and earliest form of

art and thinking by humans The use of both

verbal and visual expressions at the same time

serves to create synergistic insights of what is

happening and the unconscious meanings of

actions and outcomes in stories — an explicit

awareness (awakening) of unconscious

thoughts of the protagonist and the visual

narrative artist is likely to occur via CS CS of

stories in interpreting stories serves to enable

playing and creating alternative scenes, lines,

acts or phases and characters in a story Such

play may be useful in transforming a lifeless,

tired, boring story into a good story

CS OF AN OENOPHILE TRAVEL STORY

The following narrative applies phase

dynam-ics theory of epiphany travel to an example of

travel for oenophiles (wine lovers) A movie,

Sideways, released in 2004 shows and tells the

story The gist of epiphany travel, whether

such travel occurs vicariously through movies,

or through real-life travel, follows a general pattern A protagonist experiences some trig-gering event that awakens her or him to under-take a journey where she or he encounters, and

is subjected to, antagonists, delays and helps that result in a catharsis enabling an archetypal experience and rich understanding heretofore missing in her or his before-journey life The expositions that follow include iconic symbols that represent phases and experiences encoun-tered in epiphany travel

SPI focuses on impressionistic narrative accounts of the writer’s own private consumption experiences ‘The goal of SPI —descending from Michel de Montaigne in the 16th century — is to produce an essay that sheds light on some aspect of humanity as refl ected in the everyday life of the consumer

in general and the author in particular To paraphrase Montaigne, I believe that — because

I am human — when I write about myself, I inevitably describe some aspect of the human condition When pressed for a ‘scientifi c justifi cation’ of such practices, I reply that SPI amounts to a form of participant observation

or observant participation in one’s own life In effect, SPI constructs a sort of auto ethnography via which the author enjoys privileged access

to the relevant phenomena of interest (for a review of such debates, see Holbrook, 1995)’ (Holbrook, 2005)

The expectation is likely met that most SPI reports are unable to match the excitement of journeys in movies However, the personal views into travellers’ interpretations of their own journeys suggests that the method has inherent worth — consumers achieve deeper understanding of themselves via the stories they tell to themselves and others in comparison

to not retelling their experiences Thus, Weick’s (1995) refl ection (‘How do I know what I think until I hear what I’m going to say?’) supports the value of SPI research Trainers (e.g profes-sors of undergraduate and graduate students, high school and grade school teachers) might consider using SPI assignments in combina-tion with CS of their own stories to examine the value of learners’ incorporating iconic symbols into their stories Does the use of CS tools increase learners’ skills in writing good stories? This question is worthy of future research

Sideways (2004): epiphany travel in a movie

This movie is a story of two men entering life’s

middle age with not much to show for it,

embarking on trip to the California wine country

for adventure and to learn about themselves

The protagonist, soon-to-be best man, Miles

Raymond (an Enigma who is later revealed to

be a divorced, late thirty-something, depressed,

medicated, eighth-grade English teacher,

unpublished author and oenophile), takes his

old college roommate, an ageing lothario and

mediocre television actor, Jack Lopate, on a

road trip through the Santa Ynez wine country

during the week prior to Jack’s wedding — the

pending wedding represents the exciting

inci-dent that serves as the rationale for this

bache-lors’ trip Miles wants to drink wine, eat great

food, play golf, enjoy the scenery and spend

time with Jack, but Jack is more interested in

fi nding women and having sex The Enigma

icon is appropriate for the protagonist, Miles,

because Miles has to face and solve the

confron-tation-mystery of his expectations with reality

during the story The Little Trickster icon is

appropriate for the helping friend, Jack, because

Jack plays tricks on others and himself in

creat-ing convictions built on lies — Jack will say

any-thing and do anyany-thing to himself and others for

fun and to satisfy his libido The light bulb for

inciting incident is relevant with ‘wedding’ in

that the trip represents a one-week bachelor’s

party for Jack before the big day

Early in the movie, the viewer learns that

Miles’ wine collection includes a rare bottle of

1961 wine that he is saving for celebrating his

tenth wedding anniversary with his (former)

wife (Miles knows consciously that he is divorced

but expects (both unconsciously and consciously)

that he and his wife will get back together; he is

unaware early in the movie that his wife has

remarried and is now pregnant) — the

protago-nist’s subjective expectations crash into an

unco-operative objective reality later in the movie The

Siren icon is an appropriate symbol for Miles’

wife in that she now represents a fatalistic

attrac-tion for him — his life cannot move forward until

his continuing love for her is put to rest (see

Figure 2)

After learning of his wife’s marriage

mid-movie, and his wife’s pregnancy near the end

of the movie, the fi nal two minutes of the

movie include Miles eating alone in a booth in

a diner pouring some wine from the rare 1961 bottle from its hidden location next to his right hip; the scene refl ects Miles unconscious, as well as conscious, acceptance of reality The Rope icon is appropriate here in illustrating how Miles drinking his sacred wine bottle enables the end to its representation of his never-to-be tenth wedding anniversary

Dialogue and events during the journey reveal details about the two men Some of these revelations come from the fi rst night on the road when Miles goes upstairs in his mothers’ house and takes money from a can in her chest of drawers while looking at photos

of his ex-wife, Victoria, and, among other family members, his father When he returns downstairs, his mother asks him when he’ll get married again and if he needs money The Anti-Hero icon is appropriate for Miles here in the story because of his thievery; this reassign-ment of archetype for Miles illustrates the point that assigning more than one archetypal mantel to a protagonist and other cast members

is sometimes appropriate in CS

The next day, at a diner (location symbol) along the way, Jack ogles a young waitress and reveals Miles’ depression, job and publication status Jack says, ‘You need to get laid, Miles!’ Another revealing exchange occurs during a wine tasting that day Jack to Miles: ‘You could work in a wine store, Miles.’ Miles to Jack: ‘Are you chewing gum?’ illustrates the fun-loving Little Trickster behaviour of Jack

Soon after arriving in wine country, Miles and Jack meet Maya, a waitress at the Hitching Post (Miles’ favourite restaurant, where they dine the fi rst night), and Stephanie, a friend of Maya’s and a wine pourer Walking down the highway to the restaurant, Jack reveals, ‘I’m going to get laid before I get married on Satur-day We should both be cutting loose!’ When they see Maya at the restaurant, Miles believes that she is married, but Jack insists she is not.Miles and Jack take Maya and Stephanie to dinner While Jack and Stephanie cut up and have a great time together, Miles proceeds to drink too much wine Miles thinks about his ex-wife, Victoria, becomes morose, and leaves the table to call Victoria When he returns to the table, Jack asks Miles, ‘Did you drink and dial?’

Other dialogue also contrasts Jack’s and Miles’

different demeanours Jack: ‘Do not drink too

much Do you hear me? I don’t want you passing

out or going to the dark side No going to the

dark side, Miles!’ Miles responds, ‘Okay!’

As expected, Jack soon becomes sexually and

romantically involved with Stephanie (who also

has a young daughter, age about seven), and

Miles more tentatively begins to act on his crush

on Maya — especially once the story reveals

that she is single again Maya and Miles share

the love of good wine and discriminating

palates Neither man tells the women about

Jack’s wedding the next weekend

Miles seems to live laterally — or

side-ways — never accomplishing anything and

always getting sidetracked The romance

between Jack and Stephanie sidetracks Miles’

intentions to entertain Jack in his last days of

bachelorhood Reluctantly, Miles is willing to

put up with Jack’s behaviour in the belief that

the relationship with Stephanie is just a

tempo-rary fl ing But Jack says he might be in love with Stephanie and he is thinking about moving to the wine district and buying some land With Jack’s encouragement, Miles starts to spend more time with Maya After Miles and Maya have sex, he accidentally mentions the rehearsal dinner — revealing Jack’s wedding plans

Of course, Maya tells Stephanie about Jack’s impending wedding Stephanie (who can blame her?) goes to see Jack and screams and smashes Jack’s nose with her motorcycle helmet, sending Jack to the hospital for treat-ment Jack is upset with Miles, but Miles fl atly denies he said anything about Jack’s upcoming marriage to Maya

Miles is somewhat relieved by the incident, thinking that Jack’s humiliation and injury will allow them to get back to their original plans for the trip As they settle down to a barbeque dinner, however, Jack fl irts with Cammi, a heavy-set waitress, and Jack eventually goes home with her after her shift

Figure 2 Cognitive art gist of protagonist’s journey in Sideways, with notes.

Once again, a frustrated Miles goes back to

the motel alone Abruptly, Miles is awakened

in the middle of the night by Jack, who was

forced to escape the wrath of Cammi’s husband,

who upon arriving home from work, found

Jack and Cammi in the act Jack ran several

miles back to the motel — naked! As bad as

that ordeal would have been by itself, Jack is

more distraught that he left his wallet that

con-tains custom-designed wedding bands Jack

needs Miles’ help to retrieve the wallet with

the rings At fi rst, Miles does not want to go,

laughs at the situation and believes Jack may

have fi nally learned a lesson Eventually,

however, Jack (the actor) sobs and he is able to

persuade Miles that he is desperate and really

needs his help Of course, Miles gives in (again)

and drives Jack back to Cammi’s house In the

car outside the house, Jack talks Miles into

going inside and retrieving the wallet Miles

(now, the Hero), being who he is, goes into the

house while Jack (being who he is) stays in the

car Miles must sneak past Cammi and her

husband as they are engaging in sex while

dis-cussing Cammi’s infi delity He grabs the wallet

but is seen by Cammi’s husband As Miles

runs to the car with the wallet, the large,

angry husband — wearing nothing but a ski

cap — chases him down the street and slams

his fi sts into the car just as Miles and Jack make

their getaway The Hero archetypal icon is

appropriate for Miles here because he goes into

danger, retrieves the sacred rings and saves

Jack’s wedding plans The Protagonist icon is

appropriate in representing the temporary

physical danger of Cammi’s husband for

Miles

The next day, while Miles is fi lling the gas

tank on the way back to Los Angeles (where

the wedding will be held), Jack convinces Miles

to let him drive In order to provide a cover

story for his broken nose and bandaged face,

Jack drives Miles’ red Saab into a tree When

that did not produce enough damage, he places

a concrete block on the accelerator and lets the

car drive itself into a ditch After the two

acci-dents, Miles asks Jack, ‘Why didn’t I get hurt?’

Jack responds, ‘You were wearing your

seat-belt.’ When they drive up to the fi ancée’s house

with the hood of the Saab wired together, she

comforts Jack for his bad luck, to Miles’

disappointment

At the wedding, Victoria (Mother Teresa representing the saintly presentation of the Mother-of-Goodness, Victoria) introduces Miles to her new, handsome husband and informs Miles that she is also pregnant Even though he congratulates her, Miles is unable to contain his sadness and his lingering feelings towards Victoria, so he skips the reception and goes home to his apartment in San Diego Once home, Miles takes his much-prized 1961 Chateau Cheval Blanc, pours it into a Styro-foam cup — signifying recognition that his relationship with Victoria is beyond repair, reality replaces expectation, and drinks the wine at a diner while seated alone

Miles sends an apologetic letter to Maya, and she eventually calls him back and leaves a message on his answering machine In the phone message, Maya (the Loyalist) says that she read the letter and his book, that the book

is beautiful and painful, and that she larly liked the ending The Loyalist icon is appropriate for Maya since she gets through her anger towards Miles and Jack by continu-ing to communicate with Miles and showing support by reading and giving a favourable critique to Miles about his book

particu-Maya’s message also reveals some of the content of the novel, particularly the father’s suicide that might have come (indices) from Miles’ own life and could explain his depres-sion and negative outlook Winter, with the cold and rain, has come Maya will graduate soon, so she will probably relocate and no longer work at the restaurant She tells Miles not to give up In the last scene, Miles drives north, stands on Maya’s doorstep and knocks

on her door — indicating that, perhaps, for once in his life, he is going forward (the Change Master) rather than sideways The Change Master icon is appropriate for Miles here — he

fi nally transforms from self-pity and despair into moving on with his life and starting a new relationship with Maya

Figure 2 is visual narrative art of the main

and secondary story lines in Sideways The

main point that Figure 2 depicts is that an archetypal transformation occurs for the pro-tagonist during the story From an Enigma to

a Wise Old Man, a sage, the protagonist changes from self-pity and despair to hope and new love This illustration emphasises that all

great storytellers deal with the fundamental

confl ict between subjective expectation and

cruel reality — some stories include a catharsis

that transforms the protagonist into a different

archetypal force Figure 3 provides notes of

explanation of the archetypes, scenes, journey

and outcomes of the story The creation of both

or two versions of the visual narrative art in an

experiential learning exercise serves to deepen

understanding of the story and likely results in

enriching both visualisations

DISCUSSION

Travelling to, and experiencing some,

destina-tions serves to transform the tourist from

repeating ordinary (and to a substantial extent,

automatically occurring)

feelings-thinking-doing processes to relatively briefl y live-in

contexts that generate extraordinary meanings

Interpreting visitors’ destination experiences

as dramatic enactments of archetypal forces

serves to deepen understanding of specifi c roles, dialogues, emotions, actions and psycho-logical and physical outcomes that tourists attach to travelling to, living in a destination and returning home

Two bachelors (or a married couple) on a seven-day road trip through the Santa Ynez wine country represents a dramatic produc-tion with meanings far beyond tasting wines

at vineyards — and the visitors are likely to have only a vague idea of what experiences they seek The present study expands Arnould and Price’s (1993, p 42) main conclusion about multiday, white-water, river rafting trips in the Colorado River basin, ‘The important point is that people may be unwilling or unable to articulate the meanings they really seek from many service encounters and especially service encounters that offer something “extraordi-nary” Therefore, deciphering the unarticu-lated meanings that people seek [or experience] becomes more important for service provision

Figure 3 Cognitive art gist of protagonist’s journey in Sideways, with text notes of contexts.

than recording articulated expectations.’

Per-ceiving tourism behaviour as drama

enact-ments enables creative insights for strategists

in destination management organisations

(DMOs)

Viewing tourism as drama enactments is not

to propose that such enactment productions

need to be designed only for fi rst-time visitors

in mind Some destinations (restaurants,

museums, theme parks, cities, beaches,

prov-inces, states, nations) are venues for visitors to

return regularly to ‘experience temporary

self-transformations’ (Schouten and McAlexander,

1995) The present paper is to suggest the

use-fulness to TMEs of decoding the everyday

dra-matic productions and the gestalt experience

that enables the visitor to successfully achieve

such temporary self-transformations For some

DMOs, doing such decoding research may

identify the issue that the drama that the visitor

enacts as the principal protagonist while

expe-riencing the destination is insuffi cient to

gener-ate repeat visits Interpretive data leading to

such a conclusion likely will include useful

insights on how to redesign the destination

experience to enrich its meaning for these fi

rst-and-only-time visitors

CS and visual narrative art serves several

objectives CS likely aids in indexing and serves

to increase both the quality and quantity of

indexing The example of Miles’ Enigma and

Wise Old Man behaviours in different contexts

as representative of different archetypal

behav-iours transforms viewing individuals from a

single to a multiple dimensional perspective

CS serves to relate verbal concepts vividly to

their visual representatives CS bridges the

world of Western and Eastern thinking by

pro-viding proximity for visualising comparative

meanings The transference of the Western,

‘horse’ into visual iconic Native American and

Mandarin symbols, , both informs and

increases indexing and enables the

transforma-tion of words into cognitive art

CS and creating visual narrative art are fun,

enjoyable activities; such fun helps to open the

tourist informant and the strategist to

under-stand unconscious meanings associating with

travel and destination experiences CS

expli-cates thwarting contexts and the presence of

help to overcome personal and world

block-ages and antagonists — elements necessary for

achieving fun and engaging the tourist in extraordinary experiences

CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

This paper’s objectives are limited to ing and demonstrating the use of CS into storytelling theory, research and practice

propos-in consumer behaviour theory relevant to the study of tourism CS includes a toolkit and rules for practising visualising stories (i.e cases) Such a toolkit and practice likely helps TMEs become good story analysers Let us fi nd out if this view is accurate Future research that includes collecting tourists’ cognitively sculpt-ing reports of their own stories relating to travel and living temporarily in a destination should provide meaningful insights that fi ve-or-seven-point strongly disagree to strongly agree surveys fail to capture

Jung (1916/1959) stresses that archetypal forces represent innate stories that all humans carry in their genes that affect their everyday lives without them consciously aware of such infl uences The use of CS in interpreting travel stories brings this theoretical grounding into the realm of consciousness for tourists and TMEs

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145

Exploratory studies in the social sciences are

being increasingly advocated, particularly in

relation to new research themes or when

addressing an existing issue from a new

perspective Although exploration is usually

the starting point, it is frequently part of a

sequence of research stages However, until

recently the actual process of conducting

such exploratory research within the leisure

and tourism fi eld has received little

attention This is due not just to perceptions

that exploration is merely the initial step in

a longer research process, but signifi cantly,

because there is a lack of guidance on how

to conduct such research This paper argues

that when the overall tourism research

study involves the use of mixed methods,

an initial exploratory stage conducted as

part of a sequential research process,

requires a systematic approach to achieve a

reliable platform for further investigation

The paper shows how and why a systematic

research design process in the exploratory

stage can enhance the value of studies,

when the initial qualitative stage is to be

followed by a quantitative phase Three

phases of an exploratory qualitative research

design process are identifi ed: preparation,

development and refi nement Criteria for

assessing the suitability of qualitative data

collection techniques are proposed It is

argued that careful attention to the process

of designing the initial exploratory qualitative stage constitutes the necessary condition for achieving results that will form a sound basis for the next quantitative sequence of research Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 04 November 2008; Revised 03 November 2009; Accepted 09 November 2009

Keywords: exploratory study; qualitative research design; mixed methods research; sequential research

INTRODUCTION

As a relatively new fi eld of study, tourism

has many topics and themes that are still not well known or fully under-stood In addition, with changes over time, some tourism research themes with a relatively long history may require a fresh perspective Tourism researchers may wish to employ an initial exploratory approach, when consider-ing such themes Nevertheless, it appears that there has been little in the way of specifi c advice in leisure and tourism research litera-ture on the nature of exploratory research or how to actually conduct it There has also been a lack of advice and assistance on how to evaluate the effectiveness of an exploratory research approach in tourism (Stebbins, 2001).Tourism researchers are therefore likely to turn to the wider social science literature for assistance It would appear that exploratory research has often been advocated in the social sciences, although as Stebbins (2001) argued, it

Int J Tourism Res 12, 432–448 (2010)

Published online 7 December 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.763

Exploratory Study in Tourism: Designing

an Initial, Qualitative Phase of

Sequenced, Mixed Methods Research

Peter Mason1,*, Marcjanna Augustyn2 and Arthur Seakhoa-King3

1 School of Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing, Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

2 Hull University Business School, Scarborough, UK

3 Formerly of Bedfordshire University

*Correspondence to: Professor P Mason, School of

Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing, Victoria University,

Ballarat Road, Melbourne, Victoria 3011, Australia.

E-mail: Peter.Mason@vu.edu.au

has not been discussed at length and has been

‘remarkably underutilized’ (Stebbins, 2001,

p 3) An important reason that exploration

receives little more than a passing mention in

many social science research texts, Stebbins’

(2001) asserted is that it has not been well

defi ned as a concept and hence, social

scien-tists are not sure how to conduct such research

Nevertheless, a number of attempts have been

made to provide defi nitions of exploratory

research and Vogt (1999, p 105) in a dictionary

of research methodology defi ned social science

exploration as:

a broad ranging, purposive, systematic,

pre-arranged undertaking designed to

maximize the discovery of

generaliza-tions leading to description and

under-standing of an area of social life

Not all social science researchers,

particu-larly those who favour the use of qualitative

approaches, will necessarily support this defi

-nition, as they may be concerned with the

ref-erence to the research being a ‘pre-arranged

undertaking’ and in addition these researchers

may have worries about such an approach

leading to ‘generalisations’ It is the case,

however, that when exploratory studies have

been conducted, they have most frequently

used a qualitative approach (Stebbins, 2001;

Creswell, 2003, 2009), although this may

involve a looser structure, at least at the outset,

than it is implied by Vogt’s (1999) defi nition

An examination of a number of key texts,

many of which have been published at a later

date than Stebbins’ (2001) claim, largely backs

up the view of underutilisation of exploratory

approaches in qualitative research A key

resource for qualitative researchers is Denzin

and Lincoln’s Handbook on Qualitative Research,

but in the 1200-plus pages of its third edition

in 2005, there is no specifi c discussion of

explor-atory research Seale’s (1998, 2004) popular text

focusing on researching culture and society

does not provide a discussion of exploratory

research Silverman’s (2005) Doing Qualitative

Research makes limited passing reference to

exploratory research One popular text, in use

for well over 20 years, is Patton’s Qualitative

Evaluation and Research Methods (published fi rst

in 1980, and then in a new edition in 1990) and

this has only a brief reference to exploratory research, distinguishing it from confi rmatory and elucidatory forms of qualitative research Marshall and Rossman (1999), in their well-

known text Designing Qualitative Research,

suggest that exploration is one of the key aims

of research (the other three being explanation, description and prediction) and they provide

a rationale for the use of exploration, but give

no specifi c advice on how it should be conducted

There are exceptions to this apparent lack of detailed information on exploratory research The well-used qualitative research text,

Creswell’s (2003) Research Design: Qualitative,

Quantitative and Mixed Methods, has a short

but informative section titled ‘Sequential Exploratory Strategy’ When differentiating exploratory research from explanatory research, Creswell (2003) indicated that sequential exploratory research takes places in two phases, with a qualitative phase preceding a quantita-tive stage Creswell suggested that the primary focus of this sequential approach is to explore

a phenomenon and it is particularly useful

‘when a researcher develops and tests an instrument’ (2003, p 216) The most recent edition of Creswell’s text, published in 2009, reiterates this point Sarantakos’ (2005) text,

Social Research, has a short section on

explor-atory research Largely mirroring Creswell’s views, Sarantakos indicated that exploratory studies are frequently conducted when there is

a lack of suffi cient information about a topic Sarantakos also indicated that exploratory studies may be used to show whether a study

of a particular issue is worthwhile or feasible,

or perhaps to familiarise the researcher with the context in which the research is being con-ducted, as well as the methods to be used Additionally, an exploratory study may gener-ate new ideas and opinions about the focus of the research and could help to operationalise important concepts in the research by explain-ing their structure (Sarantakos, 2005) However,

in the case of both Creswell’s (2003) and takos’ (2005) texts, neither provides a discus-sion of how to actually conduct exploratory research

Saran-Despite concerns regarding the lack of detailed knowledge and understanding, (and hence full acceptance) by some social scientists

of the nature and procedures of an exploratory

study, there is general agreement that it is

initial research that addresses a question, a

problem, or an area of concern that has

previ-ously been unresearched or under-researched

(Stebbins, 2001; Creswell, 2003, 2009;

Saranta-kos, 2005) As Sarantakos (2005) suggested,

exploratory studies usually aim to develop an

initial understanding of a phenomenon under

investigation Such studies are frequently used

to defi ne concepts, possibly develop

hypothe-ses, refi ne questions, and provide a platform

for further investigation (Babbie, 1979;

Hart-mann and Hedblom, 1979) It is also, generally,

accepted that although various research

approaches towards conducting exploratory

studies can be adopted, including a literature

review and quantitative studies (Sarantakos,

2005), in the social sciences, the great majority

of exploratory research involves a qualitative

approach (Stebbins, 2001; Creswell, 2003,

2009)

Therefore, as a social science, tourism is

likely to fi nd itself in the position of other such

fi elds of study, in employing a qualitative

approach during the exploratory stage of the

research process This is particularly important

in exploratory studies that attempt to specify

indicators and attributes of complex concepts

and constructs for subsequent measurement

purposes (Creswell, 2009) Examples of such

complex constructs in tourism could include,

for example, ‘service quality’, ‘tourism

desti-nation quality’, ‘visitor satisfaction’ and

‘desti-nation image’ The drawbacks of the scale for

measuring consumer perceptions of service

quality (the SERVQUAL scale developed by

Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988, 1994) that are

widely discussed in both marketing and

tourism literature (Carman, 1990; Babakus and

Bolter, 1992; Cronin and Taylor, 1992, 1994;

Buttle, 1996; Ekinci and Riley, 1998; Ryan, 1999)

constitute good examples of conceptual

problems

Such exploratory qualitative studies in

tourism are frequently the fi rst stage in a

sequential research process (Miller and

Crab-tree, 1999) The results of these initial

explor-atory studies are likely to inform subsequent

stages of a research process The subsequent

stage in such research is usually quantitative

and this confronts the potential researcher with

a signifi cant problem in that this is likely to involve not just different techniques at each stage, but the research approach will shift from one conventional research paradigm, in this case, the qualitative, to the other major para-digm, the quantitative Conventionally, a number of differences have been noted in rela-tion to each paradigm’s ontology, epistemol-ogy and related methodologies This paper does not allow space for a detailed discussion

of each of these, but a brief discussion of the basic philosophical assumptions of each para-digm is provided, as the assumptions will have impacts on the research design process, which

is the focus of this paper

Teddlie and Tashakkori (2009) drawing upon the work of Lincoln and Guba (1985) summarised the contrast between each of the two conventional paradigms Teddlie and Tashakkori (2009, p 86), when discussing epis-temology indicated that, in terms of the rela-tionship between ‘the knower and the known’,

in the quantitative approach the researcher and what is being researched are viewed as independent of each other, whereas in the qualitative approach they are interactive and inseparable Teddlie and Tashakkori stated that in terms of ontology, quantitative research-ers believed that reality is single and tangible, whereas qualitative researchers viewed reality

as constructed and hence multiple These ferences in ontology and epistemology mean that different research methods have been employed, with quantitative researchers using hypothetico-deductive approaches, whereas,

dif-in contrast, qualitative researchers have tended

to use inductive approaches

As a result of these differences in ontology and epistemology and impacts on methodol-ogy, for many researchers the two approaches are incompatible and they will see them-selves as either quantitative or qualitative researchers Nevertheless, combining the two approaches, in what is known as mixed methods research, has gained in popularity in the past twenty years or so in social science research (Creswell, 2003, 2009; Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009) but dates back to at least the 1950s The fi rst detailed handbook on mixed methods research in the social sciences by Tashakkori and Teddlie, was fi rst published in

1998 although a number of journals on mixed

methods have been in existence for at least

twenty years (Creswell, 2009) Those who use

mixed methods research recognise that all

methods have limitations and that biases in

one method could cancel the biases of other

methods (Creswell, 2009) Triangulation

of data sources as a way of seeking

conver-gence between qualitative and quantitative

approaches has occurred within mixed methods

research, meaning that the results from one

method can help identify questions to ask for

the other method (Teddlie and Tashakkori,

2009) Although in use for a relatively short

period, a variety of strategies for this form of

research have been identifi ed, of which

sequen-tial mixed methods, concurrent mixed methods

and transformative mixed methods are the

major types (Creswell, 2009)

Although this paper focuses on the

discus-sion of the use of exploratory research, it should

be seen within the wider context of sequential

mixed methods research The paper presents

research processes and analyses decisions

taken at the initial exploratory stage and how

these are related to the subsequent stage in the

sequential research The research therefore fi ts

within Creswell’s (2009) sequential exploratory

strategy of mixed methods of research, where

the fi rst phase involves qualitative data

collec-tion and analysis and the second involves

quantitative data collection and analysis that

builds on the fi rst stage The paper also

high-lights some of the problems that can arise in

two-stage sequential research, when different

approaches are to be adopted at each stage, but

it concentrates on the issues arising in the fi rst

phase of research, which in this case was

qualitative

The key rationale for writing this paper is

that the characteristics of an exploratory study

combined with those of qualitative research

can make producing results that can constitute

a fi rm basis for future investigations, highly

challenging Indeed, as suggested above, for

some qualitative researchers the very notion of

producing generalisable fi ndings, from a

‘sample’, when respondents have been involved

in a detailed in-depth, small-scale study is

irrelevant, or even antithetical, to their

onto-logical and epistemoonto-logical viewpoint (Jamal

and Hollinshead, 2001) The search, by such

qualitative researchers, for ‘depth’ and

‘thick-ness’ of description, is likely to run counter

to attempts to fi nd ‘generalisable’ results However, it is not the intention here to dis-credit such qualitative research approaches Rather this paper argues that if research is sequenced, progressing from an early qualita-tive stage on to a quantitative stage, the research process which precedes the quantita-tive stage of research must be capable of producing a reliable platform that enables the follow-on stage to produce meaningful

fi ndings

Social science literature provides a number

of ways in which processes in a qualitative inquiry can be enhanced The most popular strategies include triangulation, selection of adequate and suffi ciently varied ‘samples’, clear detailing of methods of data collection and analysis, prolonged engagement, persis-tent observation, respondent validation, refl ex-ivity, attention to negative cases, and examining the output of the inquiry to see supportability

by the data (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; mann, 1988; Rossman and Rallis, 1998; Malterud, 2001) However, almost all of these strategies relate to fi eldwork and data analysis and little has been suggested in relation to

Hart-qualitative research design within the context of

exploratory studies

This paper critically assesses the value of a

detailed, initial research design process in

con-ducting an exploratory tourism study The cussion is based upon the experience gained from a study that was the fi rst stage of PhD research, which attempted to explore the meaning of the term ‘quality of a tourism des-tination’ (hereafter, called ‘the exploratory study’) The exploratory study was the fi rst stage of a sequential research process that aimed at ascertaining the indicators and dimen-sions of the notion ‘quality of a tourism desti-nation’ from the perspective of tourists The results of the research project were to inform the development of a tool (see Creswell, 2009) for measuring the ‘quality of a tourism desti-nation’ As the study intended to solve concep-tual problems associated with the existing ways of measuring service quality, much atten-tion needed to be paid to the choice of meth-odology This experience generated valuable insights into the theoretical and practical issues associated with designing an exploratory

dis-qualitative phase of study and should help

guide other students about to embark upon

similar PhD research, in particular It is hoped

that it will also be helpful for tourism

research-ers who are in their early career The fact that

the entire research process is now completed,

(including the second, quantitative stage of the

research process that drew upon the results of

the exploratory study), it enables a more

in-depth assessment of the value of the design

process in conducting an initial exploratory

qualitative tourism study and this may also

assist more experienced researchers who are

not that familiar with mixed methods

approaches

THE PROCESS OF DESIGNING THE

EXPLORATORY STUDY

As Creswell (2009) noted, research design

involves ‘the intersection of philosophy,

research strategies of inquiry and specifi c

methods’ Research design has been defi ned as

‘the arrangement of conditions for collection

and analysis of data in a manner that aims to

combine relevance to the research purpose

with economy in procedure’ (Selltiz et al., 1959,

p 25) This design process usually involves the

decisions regarding the types of questions that

need to be asked in order to generate the

required data, decisions regarding the methods

of data collection and analysis, sampling

decisions, as well as pilot testing and revision

of questions and techniques (Cooper and

Schindler, 1998) However, qualitative research

design is usually viewed as a rough sketch that

may change under the infl uence of emerging

results and is far less prescriptive than

quanti-tative research (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994;

Halldorsson and Aastrup, 2003)

The process of designing the exploratory

study consisted of three main phases:

prepara-tion, development and refi nement This is

shown in Figure 1 The fl owchart presented in

Figure 1 could imply that the research design

was very structured and decided upon a priori,

however, it was in fact evolutionary and highly

fl exible Indeed, the fl owchart was constructed

after the completion of the exploratory study and

it demonstrates what the design process

actu-ally was in the case of the exploratory study

rather than what the design process should be

Therefore, the fl owchart does not represent a framework that was used as a guide for the

research design, but is a summary of what

to minor changes to the information ments Once confi dence was gained as to the coherence between the description of the infor-mation requirements and the research aim, the main design process could begin The four main design areas, based on a number of stan-dard qualitative research texts (Patton, 1990; Marshall and Rossman, 1999; Creswell, 2003; Silverman, 2005) were:

require-• the nature of the questions;

• the data collection techniques;

• the nature of the ‘sample’; and

• the data analysis techniques

The following sections discuss the main design considerations and decisions within each of the four design areas (indicated above) and in relation to each of the three design phases, as presented in Figure 1

Phase one: preparation

This phase involved consideration of the

prin-ciples of questioning, data collection, sampling

and data analysis

Question design (Phase One) The information

requirements specifi ed at the start of the design process needed to be turned into suitable ques-tions, i.e questions capable of generating the data required by the exploratory study The question formulation process began with writing down several initial questions Particu-lar attention was paid to the coherence between the questions and, specifi cally, the wording of questions The process resulted in

the formulation of six open-ended questions

that aimed to explore the respondents’ views

on the meaning of the term ‘quality of a tourism

destination’ In addition, fi ve closed-ended

questions and two open-ended questions were

designed to gather socio-economic and

demo-graphic characteristics of the respondents

Data collection design (Phase One) The

informa-tion requirements identifi ed at the start of the

design process and the preliminary questions

constituted an important basis for the data

collection design To overcome inherent

weaknesses of individual techniques of data

collection, methodological (within-method)

triangulation (Denzin, 1978; Henderson, 1991)

was considered, in an attempt to fi nd which individual technique would be most appro-priate for the exploratory study Three data collection techniques were initially selected: open-ended questionnaires, in-depth inter-views and focus group interviews These were selected as they are regarded as particularly appropriate when the intention is to capture informants’ responses in their own words (Krueger 1994; Frankfort-Nachmias and Nach-

mias, 1996; Finn et al., 2000) All three

tech-niques have a long history of use in qualitative research (Marshall and Rossman, 1989; Maykut and Morehouse 1994; Miles and Huberman, 1994; Creswell, 2003) and are viewed as par-ticularly appropriate for qualitative research as

Figure 1 Flow chart for the process of designing the exploratory qualitative study

each allows respondents the opportunity of

providing ‘open-ended’ comment (Creswell,

2009) All three techniques, it was hoped,

would be capable of producing in-depth,

detailed data that the exploratory study

required, but each was viewed as only

provi-sional, pending a thorough assessment of their

suitability for the exploratory study

Sampling design (Phase One) Some scholars

argue that rigorous or systematic sampling is

not important in qualitative studies, as these

studies are normally conducted on a small

scale (Mason, 1996) Other scholars (e.g

Rossman and Rallis, 1998; Malterud, 2001)

stress the importance of the sampling process

in achieving transferability of qualitative

research fi ndings As the exploratory study

was to be part of a sequential research process,

careful selection of the data collection sites and

respondents was considered important For

the purpose of the exploratory study, the

pop-ulation from which the sample of respondents

was to be drawn was described as ‘tourists’

and defi ned as ‘visitors who have stayed

over-night at a tourism destination as paying guests’

It was also proposed at this stage that

purpo-sive sampling would be the best approach to

generating the required data in the exploratory

study, as purposive sampling involves careful

selection of subjects, in this case tourists, who

can provide rich information required by the

study (see Patton, 1980) However, whether or

not this was the best strategy for the

explor-atory study, particularly with regard to the

selection of the location of the study, needed

to be tested as part of the process of designing

the exploratory study Consequently, in the

following phases of the design process,

conve-nience sampling was used for the choice of the

locations of the study (various locations were

tested) and purposive sampling was used for

the choice of the respondents within these

locations (Henry, 1990) The lessons learned

from this sampling experience constituted the

basis for the choice of the sampling strategy for

the exploratory study as discussed later within

the section Implications for the Exploratory

Study.

Data analysis design (Phase One) Qualitative

data analysis aims to achieve results that

closely refl ect the respondents’ opinion on a phenomenon being researched (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), but analysis varies depending

on the research problem and the related mation requirements (Dey, 1993; Miles and Huberman, 1994) Given that the exploratory study aimed to investigate the meaning of the term ‘quality of a tourism destination’, data-based analysis, in which the data is allowed to speak for itself (Jordan and Gibson, 2004), was seen to be most appropriate as it enables the researcher to identify units in the text forming the basis for data-developed categories (Miller and Crabtree, 1999) Within this context, the

infor-‘constant comparison’ method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) was selected as the most suitable data analysis technique for the purpose of the exploratory study The ‘constant comparison’ method involves the researcher in the reading

of responses on a number of occasions, ing for meaning This is referred to as ‘unitiza-tion of meaning’ (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994) These ‘units of meaning’ are then assigned to specifi c categories (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994) The ‘constant comparison’ process usually involves a time delay in which the data that has previously been looked at, is left for a while and then looked at again, during this process the number of categories fre-quently falls as responses are seen to fi t a category that pre-exists (Glaser and Strauss, 1967)

check-Phase two: development

This phase involved making decisions,

although provisional, on what questions should

be asked, what techniques would generate the required data, how these questions should be asked, who should be responding to these ques- tions and where, and how these responses should be analysed.

Question design (Phase Two) The questions

for-mulated in Phase One required pre-testing with a view to identifying any errors before the questions could be used in designing the data collection techniques A group of research stu-dents was employed for this purpose, partly for practicality reasons and also because, it was hoped, they could provide meaningful feed-back It was discovered that the wording of the

original open-ended questions was not always

clear and one question was not needed The

questions were revised and pre-tested on

another group of research students, but no

more changes were seen as necessary However,

further pre-tests of the questions were

incorpo-rated into the process of pre-testing the data

collection techniques and the pilot study

Data collection design (Phase Two) Phase One

had identifi ed three provisional techniques of

data collection: open-ended questionnaires,

in-depth interviews and focus group interviews

In Phase Two, specifi c data collection

tech-niques and procedures were developed, as

dis-cussed below

Questionnaire design All questions from

Phase One were used in designing the

ques-tionnaire It was decided that the questionnaire

would consist of two parts: Part A contained

fi ve open-ended questions relating directly to

the research problem (Table 1, Column A) and

Part B contained questions designed to collect

respondent’s socio-economic and demographic

data

The fi rst version of the questionnaire was

pre-tested on a convenience sample (Henry,

1990) of respondents drawn from the target population (i.e tourists) at a large shopping centre in country X The choice of location was based largely on practical grounds — the close proximity to the university in which the research was based It was also regarded as important at this stage to go beyond the uni-versity environment and involve not solely research students Established procedures for conducting pre-tests were followed (De Vaus, 1996) The pre-test was declared, i.e respon-dents were informed that the researcher was conducting a pre-test Each questionnaire was completed in the presence of the researcher and respondents were encouraged to comment

on the relevance and clarity of the questions This resulted in the modifi cation of Section

A of the questionnaire, to include seven open-ended questions (Table 1, Column B) The questions in Section B of the questionnaire remained unchanged

In-depth interview design The process of designing personal in-depth interviews took place after the questionnaire pre-test This approach enabled a more informed decision as

to which questions should be used to guide the in-depth interviews Interviewing procedures

Table 1 The early versions of the questionnaire designed for the exploratory study (Section A)

Original questions (version 1 of Section A)a Question formulated after the pre-tests in country Xb

(version 2 of Section A)

What aspects of a tourism destination contribute to

the quality of a destination?

In your own opinion what factors would you look at when judging the ‘quality of a tourism

What things should be done by managers of

tourism destination to improve the quality of the

destination?

What things should a tourism destination manager

do to improve the quality of the destination?When referring to ‘tourism destination’ in your

response, what have you had in mind?

In answering the questions above, what did you have in mind as a tourism destination?

If you were asked to judge the ‘quality of a

tourism destination’, what features would you

look at?

What is a tourism destination?

In your own opinion, what factors best describe the quality of a tourism destination?

a These questions were pre-tested at a large shopping centre in country X.

b These questions were used in the fi rst pilot tests at various locations in country X and country Y.

were also established, and it was decided that

the prospective respondents would initially be

requested to participate and then those who

agreed would be asked fi lter questions to

determine their suitability Qualifying

respon-dents would be interviewed ‘on the spot’ and

notes would be taken during the interview

The interviewing process would begin with

the researcher asking the interviewee one of

the questions used in the open-ended

ques-tionnaire to start the discussion (see Table 1,

Column B) Once the discussion was

under-way, the researcher would rely mainly on the

use of probes to stimulate and focus discussion

(Frankfort-Nachmias & Nachmias, 1996; Ryan

2000)

A pre-test of the personal in-depth interview

on fi ve tourists was conducted at a large

shop-ping centre in country X It indicated that the

information generated was relevant and no

changes to the procedure or the form of the

interview were required

Focus group design The focus group

inter-view was the third potential technique of data

collection in the exploratory study Guidelines

for a successful focus group meeting (see

Morgan, 1988; Krueger, 1994) were followed in

setting the principles for conducting the

inter-views It was decided that the researcher would

explain to the participants that the session

would be tape recorded (see Krueger, 1994), all

participants would remain anonymous in the

report, ideally only one person should speak

at a time, respondents should speak up at all

times and respondents should be spontaneous

After an ice-breaking exercise (Krueger, 1994),

involving individuals introducing themselves

to the group, it was decided that the moderator

would explain the purpose of the discussion

and initiate it by asking one of the questions

designed earlier (see Table 1, Column B)

Thereafter, the moderator would maintain the

discussion by asking probe questions, such as

‘What do others think?’, ‘Is there anyone who

would like to expand on that?’

Although some scholars maintain that focus

group interviews do not require pre-testing

(Morgan, 1988; Krueger, 1994), it was decided

to conduct a pre-test, largely to prepare the

researcher for the actual focus group

inter-views The pre-test focus group session used

eight research students who had not pated previously in any of the research Valu-able information was obtained from the pre-test focus group It was noticed that the respon-dents often spoke to two or three people at the same time, which created a problem when transcribing Some contributions could not be heard clearly because the participants were not speaking loud enough The lessons learnt during the pre-test focus group interview were used to improve the planned pilot

partici-Sampling design (Phase Two) As the location of

data collection can impact upon the type of data generated (Decrop, 1999), it was decided that the pilot study would be conducted at various locations, selected by means of conve-nience sampling (Henry, 1990) In order to gen-erate information that was required by the exploratory study, it was decided to use pur-posive sampling to select respondents from the population of tourists The criteria agreed for the purpose of this study related mainly to socio-economic and demographic characteris-tics of the respondents and served as the basis for the development of fi lter questions

It was also decided that the procedure for recruiting respondents would be the same for all three data collection techniques and would involve three steps First, the researcher would approach potential respondents, make a formal introduction, explain the aims of the research and ask the potential respondent to partici-pate Second, if the potential respondent was willing they would be asked a fi lter question

to ascertain whether they qualifi ed as a ‘tourist’ Third, a second fi lter question was then to be used in terms of demographic criteria If the criteria for selection were met, the potential respondent would then be selected for the study

Data analysis design (Phase Two) This stage

involved designing the procedures for the process of data analysis It was decided to tran-scribe the data manually A system of coding, i.e labelling of all the data sources, was designed to facilitate the internal and external scrutiny of the data analysis process and the results (Dey, 1993) Codes would indicate the specifi c method of data collection, have a serial number and show the place where the data

was collected The three sets of data, i.e data

derived from in-depth interviews, open-ended

questionnaires and focus group interviews,

would be analysed separately from beginning

to end

The next step in the data analysis process

would involve reading each set of data several

times to enable the researcher to become well

acquainted with all the data and to search for

meaning and to identify ‘chunks or units of

meaning in the data’ (Maykut and Morehouse,

1994, p 127) as the fi rst part of the process of

unitising the data, within the overall ‘constant

comparison’ approach (Glaser and Strauss,

1967) outlined above Initially, small units of

meaning in the data would be identifi ed These

small units of meaning would then form the

‘basis for defi ning larger categories of meaning’

(Maykut and Morehouse, 1994, p 127) in the

subsequent stages of the research Following

Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) advice, attention

would be paid to making each unit of meaning

identifi ed stand by itself, that is, to be

under-standable without additional information

Phase three: refi nement

This phase involved:

• conducting a pilot study;

• analysing the pilot study data with a view

to ensuring that the techniques, instruments,

and procedures developed for the purpose

of the exploratory study could generate

information required to achieve the aims of

the study; and

• assessing the usefulness of each data

collection technique in generating relevant

information

Pilot study data collection The pilot study was

designed to be a simulation of the actual

planned exploratory study Consequently, the

pilot study was undeclared (De Vaus, 1996)

All three techniques of data analysis designed

earlier were pilot tested

Questionnaire pilot test The questionnaire, as

designed in Phase Two, was pilot tested using

convenience sampling for the choice of three

locations, two in country X and one in country

Y, and purposive sampling for the choice of

respondents within these locations In total, 42 questionnaires were distributed, of which 31 were usable Various strategies for question-naire distribution were utilised in this pilot test

to determine whether they would infl uence the type of data generated by the questions and whether these strategies would generate high response rates In the pilot study conducted at

a Business Centre in country X, workers of various companies operating there were approached and requested to participate in the pilot study In addition, members of the public were approached in the walkways of a shop-ping centre in a large town in country X, whereas in country Y, patrons in restaurants were requested to participate in the study The purposive sampling procedure for selecting respondents, which had been decided upon in Phase Two, was applied in this phase In addi-tion, a strategy of distributing the question-naire via hotels and travel agents was tested — one hotel and one travel agent in country Y accepted the request to distribute the questionnaire to their clients A small number of questionnaires was also distributed

on the plane between country X and country Y

Irrespective of the location of this part of the pilot study, it became clear that there were still some problems with Section A of the question-naire, where some questions were too similar and the respondents provided answers such

as, ‘see previous question’ The questions in Section A were subsequently revised, as the wording of some questions made simpler and some questions were combined to avoid dupli-cation It was decided to include only one open-ended question in Section A of the ques-tionnaire with a view to exploring the meaning

of the term ‘quality of a tourism destination’ However, it was noted that various forms of this open-ended question could generate useful information As there was no clear evidence as

to which of the open-ended questions would generate most relevant information, it was decided to develop and pilot test four versions

of the questionnaire Each version contained two questions in Section A, including a differ-ently worded Question One (see Table 2), and the eight original questions in Section B that are related to the socio-economic and demo-graphic characteristics of the respondents

The four revised versions of the

question-naire were pilot tested using purposive samples

of respondents drawn from the target

popula-tion at an internapopula-tional airport in country X

using the sampling procedures described

earlier An airport was selected as it is a

loca-tion where large numbers of the target

popula-tion (i.e tourists) could be accessed easily

Each questionnaire was answered by ten

respondents and all responses were usable

An important outcome of this part of the

pilot study was that all four versions of the

questionnaire were well designed and no

further revisions were necessary

Neverthe-less, the data generated in the pilot study

required a more in-depth analysis to determine

which of the open-ended questions designed

to explore the meaning of the term ‘quality of

a tourism destination’ would generate most

relevant information to achieve the objectives

of the exploratory study

In-depth interview pilot test A two-stage pilot

study of personal in-depth interviews was

undertaken using convenience sampling for

the selection of the location and purposive

sampling for the selection of the respondents

(Henry, 1990) The fi rst series of the interviews

was conducted in a shopping centre in country

X; the second at a later date in a shopping

centre in country Y Nine in-depth interviews

were attempted of which seven were

com-pleted The other two interviews were not

completed because respondents withdrew

during the interview Notes were taken during

all interviews and each interview lasted

between 90 and 120 minutes The pilot study revealed that taking notes by the interviewer was not the most effective or effi cient way of conducting the interviews, as the interviewer could not concentrate on listening to the respondent’s answers and some information could be lost Also the two interviewees who withdrew prior to completion indicated that too much of time was involved

It was therefore decided to conduct the second series of four pilot in-depth interviews with the use of a tape recorder The respon-dents’ consent was sought before the interview was recorded The use of a tape recorder reduced the time of conducting the interview

to approximately 60 minutes However, an advantage of taking notes was lost — when notes were taken the interviewees seemed to speak more, possibly because the respondents felt that what they were saying was important because it was worth being written down Fur-thermore, it was noted that when a tape recorder was used, the interviewees seemed to

be more nervous It was therefore necessary to consider ways in which these aspects of inter-viewing could be addressed in the exploratory study

Focus group pilot test The pilot focus group interview was conducted at the institution hosting the research project Using the princi-ples of purposive sampling agreed for the choice of respondents, 10 participants were drawn from the institution’s administrative staff The focus group interview followed the procedures for conducting such interviews

Table 2 The four versions of Section A of the questionnaire used in pilot test Ba

Questionnaire One Questionnaire Two Questionnaire Three Questionnaire Four

In your own opinion, what

In your own opinion, what makes a quality tourism destination?

In your own opinion, what makes a low-quality tourism destination?

In answering the question

above, what did you

have in mind as a

tourism destination?

In answering the question above, what did you have in mind as a tourism destination?

In answering the question above, what did you have

in mind as a tourism destination?

In answering the question above, what did you have

in mind as a tourism destination?

a All tests were conducted at an international airport in country X Each questionnaire was answered by 10 respondents.

(see Krueger, 1994) and the suggestions

fol-lowing the pre-test focus group interview It

lasted for 75 minutes and no further changes

to the design of this technique were regarded

as necessary

Pilot study data analysis An analysis of the pilot

study data collected by means of the three

dif-ferent techniques (i.e questionnaires, in-depth

interviews and focus group interviews) was

conducted in order to:

• evaluate the potential usefulness of the

questions;

• evaluate the data collection instruments;

and

• to specify the implications for the design of

the exploratory study

The process of analysis consisted of three

steps: preparing the pilot study data; unitising

the data; and evaluating the data, with the fi rst

two steps closely following the procedures

developed in Phase Two The evaluation is

dis-cussed below

Evaluating the pilot study data The process of

piloting the three data collection techniques

generated 92 usable responses With respect to

the demographic, social and economic

vari-ables of age, gender, household income, and

education respondents were a relatively

well-balanced and varied mix in composition Such

an extensive pool of preliminary results

pre-sented an opportunity to make a detailed

eval-uation of the pilot study data with a view to

determining the potential usefulness of each of

the data collection techniques and the

open-ended questions The appropriateness of the

sampling design could also be considered

The usable data was assessed with a view to

determining the suitability of the three data

collection techniques for conducting the

exploratory study Four criteria were designed for this purpose and used in this process These four criteria were based on Patton’s (1990) approaches to evaluating the usefulness

of differing qualitative research techniques The criteria were as follows:

• the effectiveness of a data collection technique;

• the effi ciency of the technique;

• the depth and detail of information that the technique produces; and

• the uniqueness of information gathered

The effectiveness of a data collection technique

was assessed in terms of the ability of the nique to generate the type of data that would

tech-be required to achieve the aims of the atory study Each data collection technique produced relevant information and thus each

explor-of them was effective (see Table 3)

The effi ciency of a data collection technique was

assessed in terms of the amount of relevant data that each technique could generate Table 4 shows the numbers of units of meaning that each technique generated and the average number of units of meaning per respondent These results indicate that in-depth interviews generated the largest amount of relevant data — both in terms of the total number of units of meaning and in terms of the number

of units of meaning per respondent

The depth and detail of data generated by the

use of each technique was assessed in terms

of the level to which the data obtained by a particular technique was comprehensive, meaningful and usable for the purpose of the exploratory study The process of unitising the pilot study data indicated that data collected

by means of in-depth interviews contained the highest level of depth and detail In contrast, the data generated by opened-ended question-naires was often too brief to be meaningful

Table 3 An evaluation of the usefulness of qualitative data collection techniques

Effectiveness Effi ciency Depth and detail Uniqueness of data

Open-ended questionnaires ✓

The data generated by the focus group

inter-view was detailed, but it concentrated only on

a few relevant aspects of the issue under

investigation

The uniqueness of the data generated was

assessed by the ability of each data collection

technique to generate new data that no other

technique had generated A comparison of the

units of meanings, generated by each

tech-nique, indicated that in-depth interviews were

the source of most unique data Indeed, neither

the open-ended questionnaires nor the focus

group interviews provided any additional

information beyond that provided by the

in-depth interviews

The evaluation of the data against the four

criteria (i.e effectiveness, effi ciency, depth and

detail, and uniqueness of the data) clearly

indi-cated the superiority of the in-depth interview

technique over the other techniques This can

be attributed to a number of reasons First, the

in-depth interview technique enabled the

inter-viewer to ask the respondents for further

explanation of their answers, which was not

possible in the case of the open-ended

ques-tionnaires By providing such an explanation,

the respondents were able to add depth and

detail to their answers Second, the interviewer

could encourage the respondents to raise other

points by asking them probing questions and

thus encouraging them to raise more points

Although probing was also employed in the

focus group technique, the relatively large size

of the group made the techniques less effective

in comparison to the in-depth interview

technique

The usefulness of the open-ended questions was

analysed separately in terms of the total units

of meaning per question and the average units

of meaning per respondent answering each

question (see Maykut and Morehouse, 1994)

As indicated in Table 5, the question ‘In your own opinion, what are the characteristics of a quality tourism destination?’ generated the highest number of units of meaning and also the highest average number of units of meaning per respondent, with twice as many as the second question on the list These fi ndings pro-vided strong support for the choice of ques-tions that should be used in the exploratory study

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EXPLORATORY STUDYThe process of design discussed previously resulted in implications for how to conduct the exploratory study in relation to the data collec-tion techniques, the nature of the open-ended questions, the sampling and the data analysis techniques

The results of the pilot study revealed that employing the in-depth interview technique would be suffi cient to generate the data required by the exploratory study Conse-quently, there was no justifi cation for employ-ing the originally planned triangulation of data collection techniques in the exploratory study Indeed, the data derived from the pre-tests and the pilot study indicated that neither the focus group interviews nor the open-ended ques-tionnaires were able to produce information beyond that generated by the in-depth interviews

The procedures for interviewing agreed in Phase Two required the introduction of some amendments following the pilot study It was decided that a tape recorder would be used as the primary method of recording in-depth inter-views, but it would be supplemented by the researcher taking down notes manually Such

an approach would provide the advantages of

Table 4 The effi ciency of the data collection techniques used in the pilot study

Technique of data collection No of respondents Total units of meaninga Ratiob

a The total number of the units of meaning that a specifi c data collection technique generated.

b The average number of units of meaning per respondent (the number units of meaning divided by the number of respondents).

both approaches to recording interviews To

reduce the levels of nervousness on the part of

the interviewees, two strategies were designed

for use in the exploratory study First, the

researcher needed to fi nd a place comfortable

for both the interviewee and the researcher for

the duration of the interview Second, it was

intended to engage the interviewee in general

discussion designed to build rapport before the

formal interviewing process began (Fontana

and Frey, 2000) Once the researcher felt that

the respondent was at ease, the interviewing

process would commence It was decided that

the two questions that generated the most

rele-vant data during the pilot study would be used

for steering in-depth interviews during the

exploratory study

The pilot study revealed that irrespective of

the place of data collection, the results were

generally similar and therefore triangulation of

places was not necessary However, some

spe-cifi c sites of data collection had some infl uence

on the response rate For example, it was

noticed that the presence of some leisure

attrac-tions at the data collection sites discouraged

potential respondents from participating in an

interview Consequently, the site for

conduct-ing the exploratory study needed to be

care-fully selected to enhance the participation rate

To meet all these requirements, it was decided

that the formal exploratory study should be conducted at a large, open and public space (subject to obtaining consent from the local authorities) which attracts large numbers of tourists Hence, the experience of testing the various locations of collecting the data con-

fi rmed the proposition made in Phase One, that purposive sampling would be the best approach

to generating the required data in the atory study (both with regard to the selection

explor-of the location explor-of the study and the selection explor-of respondents within the location of the study)

As for the size of the sample, it is widely acknowledged that qualitative researchers tend to work with relatively small numbers of respondents (between 15 and 40) focusing on depth, rather than breadth, of an inquiry (De Ruyter and Scholl, 1998) Glaser and Strauss (1967) suggested that the researcher should continue interviewing respondents until a point of ‘saturation’ has been attained, i.e when it becomes apparent that no new infor-mation could be obtained by conducting a further interview It was decided to follow this strategy for determining the sample size during the exploratory study

The pilot study had also revealed that the data analysis process had worked well and hence, no changes to this process were required

Table 5 The effi ciency of the open-ended questions used in the pilot questionnaires

Questions used in the open-ended pilot

questionnaires

No of respondents Total units of meaninga Ratiob

In your own opinion, what are the characteristics

of a quality tourism destination?

In your own opinion, what factors best describe

the quality of a tourism destination?

What does the term quality of a tourism

destination mean to you?

a The total number of the units of meaning that a specifi c open-ended question generated.

b The average number of units of meaning per respondent (the number units of meaning divided by the number of respondents).

If tourism studies adopt an exploratory

quali-tative approach as the fi rst stage in a sequential

research process, because the results of this

stage normally constitute the basis for future

investigations, adequate measures need to be

taken to ensure that the results of the

explor-atory phase provide a sound platform for the

subsequent stage Although the social sciences

research methodology literature provides some

insights into ways of enhancing qualitative

research, (see Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Hartmann,

1988; Rossman and Rallis 1998; Malterud, 2001)

the process of designing an exploratory

quali-tative study as the initial part of a sequential

research process has received little

consider-ation (Stebbins, 2001) This paper has

empha-sised the need to pay particular attention to the

initial stages in the process of designing such

exploratory qualitative studies, particularly,

when stage two will involve a quantitative

approach and the overall study is therefore

using mixed methods (see Creswell, 2003,

2009;Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009)

Although the process of designing the

exploratory study was very detailed and time

consuming, the benefi ts derived from this

experience merit the costs associated with the

process as there was reduced time and effort

at later stages of the research In particular,

accurate translation of the aim of the study into

information requirements and investigative

questions, combined with the series of

pre-tests and pilot pre-tests of the various questions,

data collection techniques, sampling strategies

and data analysis techniques, ensured the

col-lection of relevant data during the exploratory

study Employing this research design offered

the opportunity to refl ect upon the interim

results before further revisions to the research

design were made The research design

pro-vided the freedom to trial different methods

and the ability to evaluate them to determine

what worked best in an attempt to address the

aim of the exploratory study (Patton, 1990)

The design process and the evaluation of

questions and data collection techniques in

terms of their effectiveness and effi ciency, as

well as their capability to generate detailed

and unique information, enabled the identifi

-cation of the most appropriate and economical

approaches and techniques that could be used without compromising the value of the out-comes of the exploratory study (Patton, 1990; Maykut and Morehouse, 1994) In particular, the approaches adopted revealed that within-method triangulation and triangulation of places (Denzin, 1978) were not needed to achieve the aim of the exploratory study Although initially time consuming, the pre-testing and piloting, as part of the detailed

research design process, signifi cantly simplifi ed

the process of conducting the actual atory study, enabled the exploratory study to produce valuable results that proved to be a

explor-fi rm basis for the subsequent, quantitative, stages of the research process and saved time

in the overall research study

Hence, although fl exibility and

experiment-ing are important features of the design process

in an initial exploratory qualitative study, which is part of mixed methods research (see Maykut and Morehouse 1994; Miles and Huberman, 1994; Creswell, 2009; Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009), methodological rigor (i.e the enforcement of methodological principles and rules that were established during the research design process) and a systematic

approach are required when actually

conduct-ing an exploratory study to provide the fi rm

basis for the subsequent stage

It is hoped that the insights into the process

of designing the part of the study presented in this paper, may stimulate more in-depth con-sideration of the ways in which the results of exploratory qualitative studies that form the

fi rst stage in a sequential, mixed methods research process could be enhanced and that this also may prevent the occurrence of poorly designed and conducted research and contrib-ute to more systematic approaches and greater reliability

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