DALL’ANALISI IMPORTANCE-PERFORMANCE ALLA TEORIA THREE-FACTOR NELLA RICERCA SUL TURISMO – PARTE PRIMA

In the service industry, customer satisfaction is often recognized as related to guest attitudes and perceived performance of service attributes. This relation is also recognized in the context of tourism facilities, opening a wide debate on the direct role of service attributes performance on customer satisfaction. Additionally, service dimensions have a different impact on customer satisfaction, as they are critical in influencing customer perception of key attributes. Starting from the assumption that customer satisfaction is a function of the expectations related to certain importance attributes and to the perception of these attributes’ performance, the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) it is a useful technique for analyzing this relation and to allow a simple prioritization in order to improve service quality. However, IPA evolved during the years through different scholars’ contributions aimed at overcoming its limitations. This article analyzes the theories behind the IPA approach and traces the evolution of this model up to the development of the three-factor theory. In the second part, it studies the application of both approaches in the tourism and hotel sector.