The Role of Niche Tourism Products in Destination - Repository ...

3.4.1 Primary Research – Consumer and Supplier Surveys.
Personal one to one site surveys – interviewer completed were chosen as the data collection method (n = 368) in Papers 2 - 4. As
Veal (1997) states this method is more accurate, yields higher response rates with fuller and more complete answers. The surveys
were carried out with consumers of six different wineries at two different wine regions in Western Australia (WA). Interviews lasted
between 15 to 20 minutes focusing on the respondent’s previous experience of wine education, educational experience at the
winery and how far their expectations regarding wine education had been met. Postal self-completion surveys (Paper 3) were also
conducted with Western Australian wineries (n = 195 at the time). This method was chosen as it enabled a geographical area to be
targeted, had low implementation costs and removed interviewer bias (Neuman, 2000).
Paper 5 used the largest sample size of all the research presented (n = 3,946; 3,185 undergraduate and 761 postgraduate
students). From this original sample 789 students were targeted on the assumption that a 30 – 50 per cent response rate could be
expected (Sekaran, 2000). Again postal self-completion surveys were used as the research instrument. The survey comprised of
three sections highlighting: socio-demographic/study behaviour; travel experiences and visit frequency of family members and
friends. The research was a continuation of previous research by Shanka (2000) examining the importance of positioning rural WA
as a tourist destination.
In response to Pansiri’s (2006) demands for more tourism research involving groups of researchers, Paper 9 again used a postal
self-completion survey that was distributed by research teams in Western Australia, United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway (n =
194). The survey instrument was an extension of previous festival stakeholder research developed and applied to the Swedish