Using Importance-Performance Analysis in Evaluating Tourist Satisfaction. The case of Campania

There is growing evidence that customer satisfaction is a driving force behind firm’s business competitiveness and performance (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988; Zeithaml et al., 1996). This is absolutely true in the case of tourism, where there is a wide application of concepts, models and tools aimed to evaluate customer satisfaction. It is recognized in fact that, in order to identify the strengths and the weaknesses of a tourist destination and to improve its competitiveness, it is essential to “listen to the customer”. Satisfaction is commonly considered the best indicator of the state of health of tourism, an industry that is difficult to evaluate in quantitative terms. Satisfaction, even for tourism, as well as for other industries, is also directly linked to the loyalty of “clients” and, therefore, to the sources of competitive advantage. Since it is possible to view tourism as a service industry, this paper adopts the service marketing perspective to sustain the satisfaction measurement architecture as an integrated model and it proposes the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) as a tool for evaluating tourist satisfaction (Fuchs, Weirmair, 2003). Although the relevance of IPA as an instrument for the measurement of quality perceptions is well documented in the marketing literature (Ennew et. al, 1993; Slack, 1994; Matzler et al., 2003), still there is a lacking of research that provide empirical application to tourism destination management. The paper attempts to fill in this gap by proposing the IPA as a valuable and “demand-based” tool to ensure the continuous, dynamic and multi-perspective process of “review and validation” of tourism destination management practices. The theoretical framework is enriched by an empirical case study: the IPA is used for assessing the perceptions of tourists arriving in Campania Region and for identifying the main factors and/or areas of intervention to improve tourist quality according to the tourists’ perceptions. The survey has been designed and managed in a way to assure the representation of tourist flows, both in temporal and geographic terms.