สำนักงานราชบัณทิตยสภา

The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume IV - 2012 153  culture. Thus it re fl ected more grounded research (Whiteley, 2004: 27-46), such that data were to some extent ‘forced’ into speci fi c questions relating to food consumption and symbolism. Research process Data triangulation allows the respondent’s theory to emerge from multifaceted data settings (Chadwick et al., 1984: 454). Original respondents were American consumers. Due to the dif fi culties found in preliminary interviews; that is, Americans had limited knowledge of Thai processed food products, other related parties were also included in the interviews. Out of a total of 162 respondents, the researcher interviewed eight sets of respondents including (American and Thai) consumers, (Thai) exporters, (Thai and Asian) importers, (American, Thai, and Asian) retailers, (Thai) restaurateurs, (American and Thai) food experts, (Thai) government of fi cers, and (Thai) community leaders. Data collection was conducted in Thailand and the United States fromNovember 2004 to May 2007. According to Bailey and Tian (2002: 58-65), the host-culture consumers, who are primarilyCaucasian and highly educatedAmericans, aremore likely to feel comfortable with their own culture, and start exploring other cultures. Thereby, this research focused on the stories of Caucasian Americans who had experiences with Thai food, or Thai people. Four large cities, being Los Angeles-California, Chicago-Illinois, NewYork City-NewYork, and Dallas/Fort Worth-Texas, were chosen because the Americans who resided there possibly had more opportunity to encounter different cultures. As multiple realities were needed to enrich the research, interviews in Tacoma-Washington, a small city, were added. Semi-structured interviews were used to regulate the research direction. However, sets of questions were varied according to the nature of respondents. Also, responsive and situational questions were applied to enhance and probe the respondent’s answers. Since Americans have limited knowledge of Thai culture and symbolism, semiotic tools containing pictures and actual products were applied to stimulate the respondents’ memories. Ratiwan Watanasin