How useful a diary can be? An investigation into

alcohol consumption

Krzysztof Kubacki

Keele Management School

Keele University, UK

Assistant Professor Dariusz Siemieniako

Faculty of Management

Technical University in Biaystok, Poland

Presenting author

Dariusz Siemieniako is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management, Bialystok

Technical University in Poland. He teaches marketing services, marketing management and

planning and marketing research. His main area of research focuses on issues such as:

customer loyalty and alcohol consumption amongst young people. He has authored or co-

authored two monographs and more than 50 papers in academic journals and chapters in

monographs. He has presented papers at over 20 national and international conferences. His

work has appeared in international and Polish journals including Worldwide Tourism and

Hospitality Themes, British Food Journal, Marketing i Rynek, Ekonomika i Organizacja

Przedsibiorstwa, Handel Wewntrzny. He was also scholarship-holder of the Corbridge Trust affiliated by the University of Cambridge, Robinson College.

2010 International Nonprofit & Social Marketing Conference, Queensland University of

Technology & Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, 15-16 July 2010

Introduction

Although marketing research has for a long time been concerned with trying to understand

and explain consumer behaviour, so far very few studies have been carried out using

qualitative diaries as the main method of investigation. Yet authors such as Arnould (1998)

argue they could add previously unexplored dimensions to consumer research. Historicists,

anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and medical scientists have long been using diary

methods, and their advantages and disadvantages in trying to understand lives of individuals

have been very well documented. This paper discusses the use of diary method in the ongoing

multi-method research project investigating the role of alcohol consumption in university

students lives in Canada and Poland.

Literature review

One of the first uses of diaries in psychological research can be found in Allport (1942).

Within the consumer behaviour context, a recent application of the diary method is

Pattersons (1995) research into the phenomenon of text messaging. He defined a diary as a personal record of daily events, observations and thoughts, which at the same time identified the contexts in which they occur. His experience confirmed that this method is particularly suited to exploring processes, relationships, settings, products, and consumers (ibid.). Diaries are often described as documents of life, which could be further explained as self-revealing record that intentionally or unintentionally yields information regarding the structure,

dynamics and functioning of the author's mental life (Allport 1942). Their primary objective is to capture little experiences of everyday life that fill most of our working time and occupy the vast majority of our conscious attention (Wheeler and Reis 1991).

An important advantage of diary research is its ability to reveal experiences and thoughts

which are often hidden. In the case of alcohol informants may not wish to openly discuss or

present these issues for scrutiny during focus groups or interviews. Bolger et al. (2003)

offered the most comprehensive review of research questions appropriate for this method,

various tools and techniques of diary research design, and suitable data analysis strategies.

They defended diary methods arguing that they offer the opportunity to investigate social, psychological, and physiological processes, within everyday situations, allowing researchers to explore the context of investigated processes. In diaries, recorded events are captured in

their natural environment. Overcoming the problem of selective memory (Wren 1991), so

often affecting other research methods, the closeness between the actual experience and its

record in a diary minimise the problems associated with retrospective censorship and

reframing (Elliott 1997). Diaries also show much higher precision than retrospective

interviews when minor but repetitive events, which are only separate fragments of

informants overall consumption patterns, are studied (Palojoki and Tuomi-Grhn 2001).

Within more traditional ethnographic research relying on scientific observation, the diary

method creates an opportunity for observation even when a researcher cannot participate in a

process or event relevant to the topic under investigation. Students alcohol consumption represents an ideal situation for employing the diary method because the use of diaries

encourages informants to keep a record of anything that may be relevant to the study (Elliott

1997). That record of activities and thoughts which occurred in their natural environment,

uninfluenced by the presence of an observer, can then be discussed during a focus group or

interview to yield further insights into the phenomenon under study. This kind of two-stage research design was used for example by Palojoki and Tuomi-Grhn (2001), who investigated the complexity of food choices in an everyday household context using qualitative food

diaries followed by retrospective, semi-structured interviews based on them. Designing data

collection in this way provided the researchers with an opportunity to discuss the subject of

their research using real life experiences.

Research methods

The research was conducted in two phases involving focus groups and diaries. First, seven

focus groups involving 36 participants were conducted in Poland and Canada. In Poland, 10

respondents were divided into two groups, one consisting of 4 males (all aged 23) and one

group of 6 females (aged 22). In Canada, three focus groups were conducted, one with 8 male

respondents (all aged between 20 and 24), and two with female respondents, one with 11

participants and one with 7 participants (aged between 20 and 40). After each focus group the

informants were asked to keep individual written diaries for the period of two weeks. In order

to avoid an over-prescriptive design, which was earlier described by Patterson (2005) as a

straightjacket stifling informants creativity and commitment to the research, our informants were instructed to keep a daily record of every occurrence that was, in their opinion, related to

alcohol consumption. The diaries were anonymous, the respondents were only asked to write

on the first page a short paragraph explaining their consumption patterns (e.g. how much they

normally drink, how often), and then to always indicate the date and time of each entry. Other

than this instruction, diarists were given no other template or format to follow.

Findings

This paper aimed to present and evaluate the contribution that diaries can make to marketing

research using data collected for the research project investigating alcohol consumption

amongst young people in Canada and Poland. Although diary methods are often successfully

used by many market research companies, there are only a handful of academic studies using

this method, and the advantages and disadvantages of using this method in consumer research

remain relatively unexplored. In this paper three important aspects of using diaries as a data

collection tool emerged. Our major findings focused on the relationship between the tool

(diaries) and our informants, the contribution this tool can make to multi-method research,

and changes it causes in respondents. Throughout the process of writing their diaries our

respondents not only were anonymous, but above all they felt anonymous and free to express

sometimes very intimate and personal opinions, which they would not be confident to put

forward for discussion in focus groups. This concern was exhibited by most participants,

particularly females. They became aware of their own experience with alcohol, but were also

more attentive observers of other peoples attitudes and behaviours. Using diaries we were not only able to identify the real amount of alcohol consumed by our respondents during the two

week period, but also they themselves realized there was a significant difference between

what they declared in the focus groups and what they actually consumed.

Comparing the data collected using both methods we can conclude that while focus groups

provided interesting insights into social aspects of alcohol consumption, diaries offered rich

material exploring the phenomena at much more personal, often intimate level. They

significantly increased reflexivity of our respondents, encouraging them to think about the

subject of this research in more organised and rigorous way, and helping us at the same time

achieve better quality data. Thus, the diary method is best utilised when combined with other

research tools and techniques. The insights gained in this study could be used to generate

further research. In terms of implications for market research, it became clear that by asking

potential respondents to keep diaries for one or two weeks before the main data collection

should result in much more interesting and relevant insights. As a result of that process any

potential respondents become actively engaged in the research process market researchers,

interpreting and analysing the situations in which they find themselves, not just passive

informants providing raw data without putting them into broader context.

References

Allport, G.W., 1942. The use of personal documents in psychological science, Social Science

Research Council, New York.

Arnould, E., 1998. Daring consumer-orientated ethnography. In Stern, B.B. (Ed.),

Representing Consumers, Voices, Views and Visions. Routledge, London.

Bolger, N., Davis, A., Rafaeli, E., 2003. Diary methods: capturing life as it is lived. Annual

Review of Psychology 54, 579-616.

Elliott, H., 1997. The use of diaries in sociological research on health experience.

Sociological Research Online 2 (2).

Palojoki, P., Tuomi-Grhn, T., 2001. The complexity of food choices in an everyday context. International Journal of Consumer Studies 25 (1), 15-23.

Patterson, A., 2005. Processes, relationships, settings, products and consumers: the case for

qualitative diary research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 8 (2), 142-

156.

Wheeler L., Reis, H.T., 1991. Self-recording of everyday life events: origins, types, and uses.

Journal of Personality 59, 339-354.

Wren, D.A., 1991. Book review. Management laureates: a collection of autobiographical

essays (3 volumes). Academy of Management Executive 5 (4), 96-99.