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 coauthored 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
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Elliott, H., 1997. The use of diaries in sociological research on health experience.
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Palojoki, P., Tuomi-Grhn, T., 2001. The complexity of food choices in an everyday context.
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