A qualitative approach and the importance of food chains

To recap, my research aim was to identify and develop concepts which will help us better understand people’s holiday food and drink choices. This aim had two components: to investigate how our holiday food and drink choices relate to our understanding of place, and to investigate how our holiday food

and drink choices relate to our understanding of ourselves and others. I also developed four detailed research questions to address these issues:

 What role does food and drink play in the tourist experience?

 How do people’s holiday food and drink choices compare to the foods and drinks that they select at home?

 What is the role of locality and authenticity in relation to holiday foods and drinks?

 What impacts do structural constraints have on the holiday food sector? These research questions demonstrate that I am concerned with developing an in-depth understanding of why food, drink and tourism interact with place and identity in the ways that they do and, as a result, I had to investigate the meanings, values and beliefs that people held about the world. Consequently, qualitative methods based upon semi-structured, conversational interviews formed a core part of my research strategy. As Mason (2002) argues:

“Through qualitative research we can explore a wide array of dimensions of the social world, including the texture and weave of everyday life, the understandings, experiences and imaginings of our research participants, the ways that social processes, institutions, discourses or relationships work, and the significance of the meanings that they generate. We can do all this qualitatively by using methodologies that celebrate richness, depth, nuance, context, multi-dimensionality and complexity rather than being embarrassed or inconvenienced by them” (Mason, 2002 p.1).

To answer my research questions, I needed to gain an understanding of why tourists make the food choices that they do and, consequently, talking to a variety of tourists was essential. However, as discussed in Chapter 1, this research was also informed by an interest in food chains and a desire to explore the interactions that were occurring throughout them, from those producing and processing local food products, at one end, to those involved in their marketing and consumption, at the other. There were a number of

reasons for this. Firstly, it was obvious that, unless tourists were going to bring provisions from home, they could only select from the range of items available at their destination. Equally, those producing and supplying food products could only sell what their customers were willing to buy. Therefore, I needed to supplement the tourist interviews by talking to café, pub and restaurant

proprietors and local food producers so that I could understand the situation from their perspectives as suppliers to tourists and thus take account of the reciprocal relationship between producers and consumers. Furthermore, by interviewing those responsible for producing and marketing local food products, I was able to explore how the contested meanings and values

attached to such products were developed and promoted to consumers. Doing this also required me to develop an awareness of some of the key structural constraints influencing the local food sector (see Chapter 7). As a result, both these groups – the demand (consumers) and supply (providers) sides – formed the basis of my interviewing strategy as Sections 3.5-3.8 describe.

Also included in the supply-side interviews were a diverse range of food and tourism experts – from regional tourist board employees to Defra officials and

local food journalists. Talking to these people provided important background information that was useful when interpreting the earlier interviews. It also enabled me to put my research into the context of the wider issues affecting the sectors – such as government food policy and regional tourism initiatives.

The choice of a qualitative methodology based upon semi-structured

interviews was also a result of the need to take an interpretive approach to the research which aimed to delve beneath the surface of what was said to

discover the deeper meanings held by interviewees (Fay, 1975). In doing this, I was able to explore a rich variety of contextual factors that were relevant to the research.

However, as discussed in Chapter 2, understanding the interactions between food and tourism requires a consideration of structure as well as agency. This was therefore another factor behind my decision to interview a variety of actors, from the tourist consumers of food products to local food producers, café and restaurant owners and food and tourism policy makers. By

interviewing throughout the food chain, I was able to analyse the food and tourism sectors from a number of alternative perspectives and gain a better insight into the ways in which human agency was interacting with structural factors.

More extensive techniques can also complement in-depth studies because, by gathering information on a broader scale, we can attempt to establish whether the research findings are applicable beyond the immediate context of the

study. For this reason, I supplemented the interviews with some quantitative techniques, as described in Section 3.9. This comprised an analysis of menus collected from my study regions which enabled me to examine how food was being marketed in the Lake District and Exmoor.

In summary, therefore, my approach consisted of the following techniques:

 Twenty-nine1 in-depth interviews with people from a range of income and education levels who had had a variety of holiday experiences, both in the UK and abroad (p.103). The interviews focused on issues such as how the foods, drinks and eating practices encountered on the holiday differed from those of previous holidays, wherever they were taken, and with the home setting; what food and drink experiences proved most memorable; which foods/drinks – if any – they associated with being ‘typical’ of their destination; and what they felt about the social circumstances in which their holiday eating and drinking took place.

 Seventy-eight interviews with current tourists (p.106). These employed similar themes to the in-depth interviews, but were more focused on discovering how food and drink interacted with place in the specific holiday settings of the study areas.

 Twenty-four in-depth interviews with café, pub and restaurant

owners/managers (p.111). The interviews covered topics such as how these businesses promoted themselves to tourists, as well as how they designed their menus and sourced their ingredients. Interviewees were

1

I aimed to recruit 30 respondents to reflect the particular social profile described on p.104. However, the difficulty of contacting participants in the manual workers category meant that I

selected to cover a full spectrum of the various types of eating places that were found in both study regions.

 Seventeen in-depth interviews with local food and drinks producers (p.115). These producers were selected to cover the range of different types of produce available in the study regions. Interviewees were asked to give details of their wholesaling and direct sale activities and were asked to explain how they produced and marketed their products in order to explore the economic realities facing producers. They were also questioned about the role that tourism played in their businesses.

 Sixteen in-depth interviews with local food and tourism experts and promoters (p.119). These were the broadest kind of interviews,

covering everyone from food journalists and tourism planners to Defra officials. They were designed to place the study in context by giving an insight into factors such as the policy culture and imagery surrounding local food.

 Analysis of 80 menus (p.122). The menus, which were collected from all the eating establishments within selected towns/villages in the study areas, were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analysis to

investigate the role of locality and authenticity in relation to holiday foods and drinks. The analysis showed the types of dishes available in both regions and the extent to which authenticity and local

sourcing/provenance were promoted through how the dishes were described.

Table 1 shows how these techniques were combined to tackle specific

elements of my research questions. As the table shows, there was a degree of overlap between the methods employed, and this triangulation was helpful in cases where I wanted to verify conclusions, gather more detail or compare the responses of different groups of interviewees. However, some methods also had a more specific focus on one or more of the research questions, thus enabling certain themes to be targeted more effectively.

Table 1. How the six methods related to the four research questions

Themes and research questions In-depth and current tourist interviews

Café, pub and restaurant interviews Food producer interviews Expert interviews Analysis of menus

1. What role does food and drink play in the tourist experience?  

2. How do people’s holiday food and drink choices compare to the foods and drinks that they select at home?

   

3. What is the role of locality and authenticity in relation to holiday foods and drinks?

    

4. What impacts do structural constraints have on the holiday food sector?

   

In addition to deciding which techniques to employ, I also had to decide where to conduct my research. The following section explains the rationale for basing this study on a dual-site approach that compared the Lake District and