بهبود تجزیه و تحلیل اهمیت عملکرد: نقش منطقه تحمل و عملکرد رقبا. مورد هتل های چشمه آب گرم تایوان

Importance–performance analysis (IPA) is a valuable and popular approach for prioritizing improvements to the quality of services. Despite its simplicity, shortcomings in the analytical framework remain: (a) its application is hindered by measurement bias; (b) it requires a crosshair placement mechanism to enhance the reliability of managerial interpretations; (c) it does not account for differences between the characteristics of quality attributes; (d) it ignores the relative performance of competitors in the competitive marketplace. Since all of these issues have important managerial implications, this work proposes a model for evaluating service quality based on the competitive zone of tolerance by benchmarking against competitors, and then constructs an analytical framework referred to as “CZIPA” (competitive ZOT service quality based IPA) for prioritizing quality improvements of quality attributes to resolve these above issues. The case of a Taiwanese hot springs hotel is presented to demonstrate the implementation of the proposed CZIPA. The results of this case study demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the determination of priorities of attributes for improvement using CZIPA, enabling hotel managers to achieve a competitive advantage.

Approximately 6.1 million inbound travelers visited Taiwan in 2011. The major recreation activities of these visitors were shopping (82.76%), visiting night markets (73.99%), visiting historical sites (36.26%), visiting lakes (29.97%), and visiting hot springs (27.07%) (Taiwan Tourism Bureau, 2012a). Hot spring tourism also represents 5.2% of the leisure activity of domestic tourists (Taiwan Tourism Bureau, 2012b). Visiting hot springs has recently become the fastest growing activity for both Taiwanese residents and overseas visitors, attracting the interest of managers in the hot springs hotel sector. However, the market for hot spring hotels in Taiwan is already saturated (Tseng, 2009). Consequently, too high product homogeneity and intense market competition make it difficult for management to distinguish their operations from the other market participants in order to expand their market share. From a hotel managerial perspective, maintaining market share and increasing profitability are the major impetuses of improving hotel service quality (Gržinić, 2007), highlighting the importance of evaluating the perceptions and expectations that consumers have toward the service quality of hot spring hotels. Besides accurately evaluate customer perceptions of service quality, managers attempting to develop an effective strategy with limited resources must also prioritize the service attributes to be improved (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1997). Following their development of SERVQUAL, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1991) proposed the zone of tolerance of expectation (ZOT). Derived from the concept of multiple expectations, ZOT asserts that service performance that customers deem acceptable may fall into a range and can provide insight into customer perceptions toward managers (Johnston, 1995). Despite the fact that some researchers have utilized this concept in the evaluation of service quality (Nadiri and Hussain, 2005, Santos and Boote, 2003 and Yap and Sweeney, 2007), the application of this concept to evaluate and improve perceived service quality remain issues of research (Walker & Baker, 2000). One major concern is that the method for accessing service quality must still be verified. Another concern is the application of ZOT for evaluating the priority of improving the service quality of the attributes (Hu, 2010). Importance–performance analysis (IPA) is the conventional means of prioritizing attributes to improve service quality (Bacon, 2003). While consisting of two dimensions and four quadrants based on evaluations of performance and importance of the attributes, IPA is an effective means of prioritizing attributes (Sampson & Showalter, 1999). Despite the simplicity of IPA, its applicability has certain limitations (Matzler, Bailom, Hinterhuber, Renzl, & Pichler, 2004). For instance, no definitive standard is available for setting the range of horizontal and vertical axes, measurement scale, and placement of the crosshairs (i.e. vertical and horizontal lines) in IPA. Measurement bias and placement of the crosshairs both influence the quadrant of the IPA plot to which the service attributes fall into, subsequently affecting the reliability of decisions in terms of improving service quality (Oh, 2001 and Taplin, 2012a). IPA is also limited in that it considers only its own performance and disregards the relative performance of competitors in a competitive marketplace (Keyt, Yavas, & Riecken, 1994), making it impossible for a business to recognize its market share and ultimately diminishing their competitive edge. Therefore, several scholars have suggested further clarifying the fundamental applications of IPA to evaluate service quality (Matzler et al., 2003 and Walker and Baker, 2000). Above concerns regarding IPA must be addressed to enhance its applicability, leading to the development of appropriate managerial strategies based on service quality evaluation results. Many scholars have claimed that gap analysis based on the relative performance concept can eliminate measurement bias and address the crosshair placement issue (Fallon and Schofield, 2006, Smith and Costello, 2008, Taplin, 2012a and Tongue and Moore, 2007). This concept is also applicable to evaluate and determine the best improvements of performance by benchmarking against the service levels of competitors, allowing businesses to gain a competitive edge (Keyt et al., 1994 and Taplin, 2012a). Furthermore, from a resource allocation perspective, all service attributes do not need to achieve or even exceed the service desired by customers. When making certain improvements are prohibitively expensive or when other strategic considerations are incorporated, certain service attributes may need only to outperform competitors. Therefore, by using IPA and ZOT as a framework and by comparing the service performances of competitors, this work presents a novel method for evaluating service quality attributes and prioritizing the attributes for improvement, called “competitive ZOT service quality based IPA” (CZIPA). Based on the competitive ZOT (CZOT) concept, the proposed model provides a framework for comparing the service performances, addressing the issues of measurement scale, measurement bias, and crosshair placement. Moreover, in addition to providing a framework for prioritizing strategies more efficiently, the proposed model offers a theoretical foundation for future works that attempt to extend the applicability of ZOT and IPA concepts. This work also provides business managers with an effective analytical approach for evaluating and enhancing service quality.

5.1. Discussion and conclusions Service quality has become an important issue for companies that are dedicated to providing differentiated services and competing efficiently in the marketplace. To improve service quality efficiently, business managers must be able to identify the priorities of improvements of service attributes according to customers' expectations, especially with limited resources. This work proposed an analytic framework for evaluating and prioritizing improvements of service attributes with reference to the competitive ZOT of expectation and importance. The analyses are CZSQ and CZIPA, respectively. Service at a hot spring hotel in Taipei's Beitou district was taken as an example. CZIPA applies the ZOT and benchmarking concepts to yield an acceptable analytical results and recommendations for management. CZIPA can also more effectively assist managers to determine comprehensively their service performance and position in a competitive market. The advantages of the proposed method are as follows. 5.1.1. Reconstructed ZOT for evaluating service performance The proposed CZIPA, which considers both the adequate service and ZOT of expectation, can be used to evaluate service quality. Additionally, CZIPA extends the service adequacy concept by considering the difference between the perceived service performance of the focal hotel and that of competitors, to evaluate the quality of service by a focal hotel. In CZSQ model, the service performance of the focal hotel is compared with that of its competitors by applying the CZOT concept. Finally, the CZIPA framework is constructed using the concept of difference in importance, which is used to identify service attributes that require further improvement and to prioritize those improvements based on the needs of customers. Restated, in addition to adopting CZOT as a fundamental concept, CZIPA incorporates comparisons with competitors, to provide CZSQ model for assessing service performance. 5.1.2. Reducing measurement bias CZIPA uses competitors as a scientific control to reduce measurement bias. Neslin (1981) posits that relative importance can be used to develop more effective strategies than can be obtained using absolute importance, and more accurately to reflect a competitive business environment. Dolinsky and Caputo (1991) thus recommended making comparisons with competitors to offer more practical and effective suggestions to improve service quality. In CZIPA, the performance, importance and gaps (performance minus importance) are benchmarked against those of competing hotel. The competing hotels act the role of a scientific control. Accordingly, measurement bias is canceled in the calculation of differences in performance, importance and gaps. 5.1.3. Solving problem of the placement of the crosshair The concept of the gap is used to provide a basis for placing the crosshair to help managers to interpret the results of CZIPA with reference to the diagonal line that represents DI = CZSQ. In CZIPA, positions the placement of crosshair as well as the diagonal line (i.e. ideal line), which signifies that the difference in importance and CZSQ are equal to each other, can cross at zero value (gap=0). Doing so resolves the crosshair placement problem that appears in the traditional IPA. 5.1.4. Reducing correlation between performance and importance CZIPA can reduce the correlation between performance and importance, subsequently increasing the effectiveness and practicality of recommended improvements. Numerous studies have stated that relationships between performance and importance exist, affecting the interpretation of IPA result. Therefore, IPA-based management activities must recognize that interventions to improve performance with respect to an attribute may also influence the importance of that attribute. Indeed, such an intervention may also influence reported performance and importance of other attributes. Therefore, Taplin (2012a) recommend adopting relative measures to reduce the correlation between performance and importance when interpreted of IPA result. In this study, analytical results consists with that of Taplin (2012a) and represents that the relationship between performance and importance is reduced by taking differences under CZIPA, thus reinforcing the need to benchmark performance and importance against those of competitors. 5.1.5. Easily prioritizing attributes for improvement In CZIPA, managers can easily prioritize attributes for improvement by simply determining the horizontal distance (d) using Eq. (6). This term d denotes the degree of improvement of a particular service attribute over that of competitors, and the urgency of that improvement. In summary, an attribute with a larger d must be improved with a higher priority. Therefore, based on CZIPA analysis, managers can easily prioritize service attributes and determine which attribute should be improved first. They have only to calculate the value of d by importing the data into Eq. (6). 5.2. Managerial implications This work proposes a modified version of importance performance analysis (CZIPA) and demonstrates its application in the context of hot springs hotels. The proposed method allows managers more thoroughly to understand consumer perceptions in light of competition and guards against the delivery misleading data to management. This work also demonstrates that competitive performance should be the standard metric for evaluating the service performance of focal hotel. Obviously, no hot spring hotel has unlimited resources to improve all service attributes at all times. Moreover, not all guests require that all service attributes exceed their desired service level. CZIPA results of a comparison with competing hotels reveal that the service levels of focal hotel in many attributes are lower than those of the competitors. From the perspective of hotel managers, the service quality at their hotel must be better than that of competitors. Therefore, comparing competing hotels enables focal hotel managers to improve performance with respect to all service attributes where they perform poorly, rather than improving the services that they already perform adequately. In summary, the order of priority of improvements that is recommended by CZIPA is reasonable. In terms of a competitive advantage, a greater customer ZOT implies that customers tolerate a larger variation of performance. Therefore, given a particular negative competitive performance, improvements associated with attributes with larger ZOT can be assigned a lower priority; in addition, attributes that have a smaller ZOT should be improved with a higher priority (Hu, 2010). 5.3. Limitations and future research This work determines the competitive ZOT of expectation and implements CZIPA. However, several variations in the implementation of CZIPA suit various situations. Hence, other circumstances should be considered to facilitate future applications of CZIPA. First, although CZIPA can provide insight into areas in which management must improve services, the relationship between service performance and intentions to patronize still remains unclear. Improving service attributes is ultimately intended to build a brand image, spread positive word-of-mouth, attract new customers, and retain current customers. Therefore, we recommend that future IPA-related research should incorporate the aforementioned outcome variables to examine whether improving service attributes can increase overall business revenues. Second, as proposed by Zeithaml et al. (1993), certain factors may determine the width of the zone of tolerance. These may include situational factors, advertising, price, repurchase intention, and word-of-mouth recommendations. Future empirical research should investigate how these factors affect customer expectations. Third, several of the issues that were raised by Zeithaml et al. (1993) warrant further investigation. Notable examples include how to design marketing strategies to manage adequate service level expectations; how predicted services influence the way in which consumers evaluate service quality, and how to incorporate the concept of the ZOT to formulate marketing strategies in the hot springs hotel sector. Finally, while this work has provided valuable suggestions concerning the order of priority of improvements of service attributes that must be improved, the cost and effectiveness of improvements must also be considered. Generally, managers always desire to make maximally effective improvements as cheaply as possible, Many studies of financial performance have discussed the advantages of improving service quality (Rust et al., 1999 and Rust et al., 1995). However, we recommend that future research more closely examines ways to incorporate the cost factor into decision-making to improve service quality. Accordingly, in addition to continuing to address decision-making for improving the quality of services, future research should develop methods that incorporate cost and effectiveness into the decision-making process.