“That's not true!” paired interviews as a method for contemporaneous moderation of self-reporting on a shared service experience

Abstract

Tourism and hospitality service experiences are both delivered with and experienced amongst other individuals as part of the service setting. Understanding consumer perceptions of these shared experiences is essential for providers. Consumer recollection of these experiences, however, are sometimes limited. This paper explores the opportunity to use paired interviews as a qualitative method for moderating self-reported data “on the spot”. Paired interviews that explore shared experiences can be clarified, or corrected contemporaneously, with reduced bias or modification of what was experienced, particularly when that behaviour may not be socially acceptable. This article presents data collected after a shared tourism experience of an overnight visit to a luxury lodge at a zoo and proposes a framework to classify interactions between participants in a paired interview situation. The method of shared or paired self-reporting interviews results in enriched qualitative data based on the exchanges of pairs participating in the interview process. This method is useful in practice by mitigating limitations identified in self-reporting situations, particularly after a shared service experience.