The Performance-Importance Response Function: Observations and Implications

Abstract

Services and products possess various attributes, some being more important than others. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is a technique for prioritising attributes based on measurements of performance and importance. A weakness of IPA is that it conceptualises attribute importance as a scalar which is independent of attribute performance. In this article we theorise that importance is not adequately represented as a point estimate, but is a function of performance. When attribute performance changes, importance does also, which can change the relative priority of subsequent improvement efforts. Empirical results are presented which support our theory, The nature of the performance-importance response function is discussed, along with implications. Ideas for future research are also discussed, including application of the findings to quality modelling (SERVQUAL) and other decision support methodologies (Quality Function Deployment and the Analytic Hierarchy Process).

Rural Tourism – Evaluating the Quality of Destination

“…IPA is a tool that serves for the identification of the relative importance and performance of individual factors that have an impact on the observed quality. This method was first introduced by Martilla and James (1977) and it is the basic diagnostic and decisive tool (Matzler et al, 2003) that enables the identification of factors with the highest priority for improvements (Sampson, Showalter, 1999) and according to Levenburg and Magal (2004) where the number of dimensions then corresponds with the number of first principal components before the eigenvalues of principal components that express the level of data variability explained by principal components decreases.…”

Jordanian Travel Agencies' Websites Assessment: Experts vs Tourists' Perceptions

“…(Roszkowski, 2003;Sampson and Showalter, 1999). This is the principal factor that we need to determine which of three options we must choose to fit the categories.…”

“…The analysis begins with the identification of the critical elements to be evaluated, then, a developed instrument will be used to gather the grades of importance and performance, and normally, the Likert scale is used to achieve The literature demonstrates numerous utilities of IPA analysis, since this method has been used widely to develop and evaluate the clients' satisfaction in services and marketing strategies, in many researches as those of (Martilla and James, 1977;Crompton and Duray, 1985;Sampson and Showalter, 1999).…”

Evaluación de la calidad de un servicio de voluntariado en oncología: un Análisis Importancia-Valoración (IPA)

“…Además, hay varios estudios en muestras españolas y esto último es una ventaja ya que se ha encontrado que la técnica es sensible a diferencias culturales en otros entornos (22,23) . Esta técnica se basa en las teorías de expectativa-valor y en las teorías de la discrepancia de las expectativas (22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27) . Su funcionamiento tiene como hitos principales la selección de atributos que definen al servicio a evaluar, la medición de la importancia de cada atributo en una muestra de usuarios del servicio, la medición de la valoración de cada atributo en la misma muestra anterior y la representación grá-fica en dos ejes de los datos encontrados, que permite interpretar los resultados en 4 decisiones gerenciales: "concentrarse aquí, mantener el buen trabajo, baja prioridad y posible dilapidación de recursos".…”