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This section of the book comprises three chapters written by Oksana Grybovych, Susan Slocum, Ken Backman, Elisabeth Baldwin and Chris Ryan. The first two by Grybovych (2012) and Slocum, Backman, and Baldwin (2012) respectively report research processes related to specific projects, while the last seeks to provide an analysis associated with cross-case study research. By definition cross-case analysis relates to comparisons being made across different places, or of the same place across different times (a longitudinal analysis such as that by Gu & Ryan, 2008, 2011, in their studies of Shi Chi Hai Hutong in Beijing) or indeed of different places at different times, but related to each other by the commonality of a theme identified by the researcher.

Prior to the development of low-cost computing and the ease of completing statistical analysis, case studies played a significant role in the development of the social sciences. However, since the mid-1990s statistical modelling and empirically driven work has come to dominate academic literature; yet there remain epistemological similarities between some forms of case study work and statistical modelling. Nonetheless, issues of the qualitative versus quantitative divide and the purported role of value judgments made by the researchers have in part muddied the waters until quite recently, when the researchers using statistical methods started to adopt the use of the first person in their writing and began to recognise that the choice of a given statistical technique is just as surely a value judgment or exercise of experience and expertise as is any interpretation of text by a qualitative researcher. Similarly, qualitative researchers have become increasingly familiar with textual analysis using software programmes based on neural network theory, and a new generation of researchers have become comfortable with a mixed method mode of analysis.

Those promoting tourism often seek to highlight that which is unique about their destinations in order to attract tourists. Many countries have beautiful landscapes, rich histories and heritage, and the tourist may come to see linkages of landscape and history across different countries and indeed possibly across continents. However, in the search for the unique, those countries with ethnic minority or other minority groups demarcated by factors other than ethnicity but characterised by special belief systems or ways of life living within their borders (e.g. the Amish) are truly able to offer the tourist a glimpse of something that will not be found in other parts of the world. Accordingly, and being aware that holiday makers are not lay anthropologists and may be seeking little more than an entertainment, minorities and their culture have become in many places a staged show based primarily on song and dance. Indeed, such has been the process that Xie (2011, p. 196) provides an example from the island of Hainan, China, where tourism promoters have created ‘the authentic Chiyou tribe’ to entertain tourists – a tribe developed purely for entertainment based on concepts of the exotic and primitive and only loosely based on the culture of the native Li people. One partial result described by Xie (2011) has been that the Li themselves have become confused as to their own culture.

This chapter is a general introduction to the field of case study research in tourism, hospitality, and leisure. The chapter presents a brief review of the literature on the intra-individual logic of case study research. The chapter describes the “four horsemen” for doing case study research: accuracy, generality, complexity/coverage, and value/impact. Examples in the chapter that illustrate this perspective for undertaking case study research may impassion the reader to read through the field guide and personally engage in case study research – at least that is the hope of the editors of this field guide.