Looking beyond performance: understanding service quality through the importance-performance analysis

The majority of sport service quality research uses a performance-only measurement technique, a major departure from the foundational theories upon which those studies are grounded. In this study we examined the utility of importance-performance analyses (IPA) to the measurement of sport service quality. Importance-performance analysis has been scantly used in sport literature, and the research that has employed it has ignored advancements: Gap 1 analysis, Gap 2 analysis, and three-factor theory. Data were collected via a partnership with a professional soccer club in the United States. A total of 680 respondents completed the online questionnaire, and responses were used to conduct the four analyses. Results demonstrate the utility of IPA and benefits of measuring both importance and performance to understand consumer attitudes when making service attribute decisions.