Revising importance-performance analysis: a new synthetic service quality indicator applied to the tourist apartment industry

Abstract

Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is a valuable tool for developing marketing strategies by prioritizing improvements to service quality attributes. Despite its simplicity and easy interpretability, IPA is not free from criticism. Moreover, IPA methodology does not consider the distribution of respondents when the importance-performance grid is displayed. By applying the analysis to a sample of four competing tourist apartment complexes located in the Canary Islands, this work aims to propose a new synthetic service quality indicator by importance-performance analysis (SSQI-IPA) to overcome the above-mentioned limitations. On the one hand, by comparing service performance with competitors, managers can establish adequate strategies to enhance their relative position in the market and achieve competitive advantages. On the other hand, taking into account the whole distribution of the importance-performance grid provides managers with more accurate results than traditional IPA.