Research Instrument

In both surveys, questionnaires with closed, structured queries, mostly on Likert-type scales, were used. For the first survey (Tourism 95), a first draft of the questionnaire, which was a combination of the Kinnear questionnaire and the USER instrument (see Chapter 3), with only the minimum alterations to make it industry and culture specific (i.e., for the Australian hospitality and tourism industry), was prepared. This draft was then discussed with several close industry contacts of the author in informal but structured interviews. The contacts were chosen from among the senior operational managers of the tourism industry and they broadly represented various sectors of the

industry as categorised in the instrument. The managers were asked to evaluate the questionnaire with a view to (1) assessing the relevance of its conceptualisation of marketing research utilisation, (2) appraising the suitability of the terminology to specific sectors, (3) identifying any other potential marketing research uses that are not covered by the proposed questionnaire, and (4) making other suggestions, criticisms and comments on the questionnaire and its facets. Based on this pretest, necessary revisions were made to the instrument to ensure its relevance to the hospitality and tourism industry within a specific (Australian) culture. In total 16 managers were approached, although only 13 of them were ultimately interviewed. Their feedback was recorded and analysed and necessary alterations to the instrument were made with the proviso that the altered instrument was sufficiently similar to the original instruments that it was based on, to enable comparative studies. The questionnaire that was used in the Tourism 95 survey was the instrument that was modified after these interviews, to produce the Tourism 98 instrument (Appendix ). The first section of the questionnaire began with the preliminary questions regarding sector identification, organisational demographics, and marketing research department structure and budget. Then, a list of marketing research activities, divided into six sectors as for the AMA questionnaire, was presented and respondents were asked to indicate whether the type of research was conducted by their organisation and, if it were, whether it was conducted by their marketing research department, another department in the organisation, or an outside organisation. In section two of the questionnaire, respondents were asked to focus on a recent marketing research project related to their organisation with which they had been associated. The use of one critical incident, rather than general questions about research, was chosen so as to obtain responses that are relatively less affected by attitudinal bias. This approach is in keeping with work on marketing research that preceded the present investigation (e.g., Deshpandè and Zaltman 1982, Menon and Wilcox 1994). However, given the mode of data collection, all measurement was based on respondent perceptions rather than observed behaviour. Since there are methodological problems associated with self-reports (Malhotra 1996), the use of a recently conducted project as the research incident of focus was in order to avoid an unduly large positive utilisation bias on the part of the respondents. It was also thought that short-term memory being more reliable than long-term memory, the discussion of a recently conducted research

project could provide more meaningful responses. Another perceived advantage of using this critical incident approach is the avoidance of non-recursiveness in the model to be tested. Since this thesis conceptualises utilisation as a cyclical process, the aggregative impact of experience makes causal model testing unreliable. By imposing a critical incident focus on one recent research project, sequential activities in the research process can be analytically separated and handled in a consecutive order.

The questions in section two of the questionnaire were largely similar to those in the USER instrument discussed earlier. The items were grouped in similar fashion to USER, with the exception that group headings were removed to avoid undue prompting that may lead to response bias. A six-point (rather than five or seven-point) Likert-type scale format was also kept in the belief that an even numbered rating may minimise the possibility of respondents taking the middle ground out of a desire to complete the questionnaire quickly or to avoid thinking carefully on issues.

The questionnaire ended with a space for respondent name and position title, and the name and address of the organisation. To reinforce the assurance of total confidentiality, the completion of respondent details was made voluntary. A copy of the research results was promised to respondents who completed the respondent details section. This was the only incentive offered for the response.

The results of the Tourism 95 survey (discussed in Chapter 6) indicated the need for a number of revisions of the initial questionnaire. In the first section, some questions on organisational demographics (revenue, number of personnel, and the age of the organisation) were moved towards the end of the questionnaire. This was principally because it was found that a number of respondents viewed the questions as commercially sensitive and their reaction influenced their decision to continue with the questionnaire. The questions on marketing research budget and marketing research department structure were simplified and left in the beginning of the questionnaire. Four questions from the Tourism 95 questionnaire were discarded because they did not produce meaningful responses or they replicated information that could be deduced from other questions.

The question on research activities was condensed in content but expanded in the choice of answers to include the parties who developed the research, and those who

analysed the data (‘mainly this organisation’, ‘mainly outside organisation’, ‘both this and outside organisation’). A new, 46-part question on research techniques was added to this section inquiring whether the respondent recognised the technique and, if so, whether the technique was used at all and how often. This question was adopted from the latest AMA survey, the results of which were published whilst the Tourism 95 survey was in progress.

The 39 items in section two of the Tourism 95 questionnaire were kept, with the main modification of converting all statements to positive ones as a result of an exploratory factor analysis carried to assess the USER instrument (Yaman and Shaw 1998a). Another 44 items were added to measure respondent perceptions of the cost-benefit of marketing research, the information culture of the organisation, environmental factors, organisational structure, and the effect of marketing research on financial and other performance. Outside of two open questions that measured respondent perception of research priority needs of their organisation, all items were closed, Likert-type rating scales. The final instrument contained 90 main questions and a total of 142 answerable items.