ABSTRACT
Since tourists’ decision-making is a quite complicated mental process, it has been a challenge for tourism scholars to fi nd out how to investigate this abstract object and to apply research methods satisfactorily. There have been all kinds of quantitative and qualitative research methods adopted to understand tourists’ decision-making. As a matter of fact, different perspectives on this interesting topic require different instruments. In order to understand the critical implications of these studies for wider tourism marketing, as well as to understand which method is most appropriate for different circumstances or research questions, it is important for us to have a clear understanding about what kinds of methods are available, what functions these methods serve and what goals can be achieved through each method.
