This research intends to understand whether Kaohsiung is heading toward or away from being a livable city. Additionally, it also intends to show if the developments in the city conform to the expectations of the residents. Therefore, the analysis in this research is based on objective statistics and the resident¡¦s subjective perceptions. This research utilized Time Series analysis and questionnaires to conduct the research, and used importance-performance analysis as the analytical method. The questionnaires targeted the residents in Kaohsiung City who are over 20 years of age. The total samples are 330 with 254 valid samples. The questionnaires surveyed the level of livability of Kaohsiung judging from 5 aspects: the eco-environment, culture & education, economic development, urban living & service, and medical & social welfare, reflecting the difference between the importance and performance of each aspect. Below are the suggestions concluded from the results of the research, which pointed out the improvements needed for Kaohsiung and the items that can use less attention: 1. According to the time aptitude objective statistics, Kaohsiung has shown mostly positive growth on cultural education, especially on holding cultural events and replenishing books for the public libraries. However, the economy has shown negative growth, 2. Based on importance-performance analysis, out of 23 indications, 4 of them (17.38%) fell on keep-doing area, 4(17.38%) fell on excessive supply area, 6(26.1%) fell on lower-priority area, 9(39.14%) fell on improvement-focused area. 3. Combing the data gathered from the questionnaires and statistical analysis, the items require grave improvement are raising the wages of the residents, lowering unemployment rate, and resolving the problem of abuse to children and teenagers. From both the subjective and objective analysis, items that are overly supplied are the number of times of holding cultural events and replenishing books for the pubic libraries. Based on the results from the research, it is suggested that Kaohsiung put resource to economy and medical & social welfare, while decrease overly investing cultural education.

The aim of this research was to provide a practical method for assessing visitor satisfaction at a local festival. It is crucial for festival management to monitor and evaluate visitor satisfaction in order to understand and identify the needs and perceptions of attendees, which in turn allows organizers to design and tailor the festival elements towards them, leading to higher visitor satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth advertising, and increased likelihood of repeat attendance (Lee, Lee and Choi, 2011; Lee & Beeler, 2009). The research objectives were to evaluate current levels of satisfaction of festival attendees, to determine what attributes are importance in determining satisfaction, and to analyze whether importance and performance of those attributes differs based on demographics and visit characteristics, with the aim of recommending policies to assist the festival in increasing overall visitor satisfaction. A questionnaire was distributed over four days, and three event locations resulting in the collection of 389 completed questionnaires. Respondents were asked to complete demographic and visit information as well as rate the importance and performance of eighteen festival attributes. ANOVA and independent t-tests were used in order to determine whether the importance and satisfaction of these attributes differed based on the demographics and visit characteristics. An Importance-performance analysis (IPA) was then used to assist event organizers in resource allocation while identifying critical performance attributes in order to improve visitor satisfaction. Findings reveal attributes associated with program content, convenience and food and beverage ranked higher in determining visitor satisfaction than the attributes associated with souvenir, transportation and information availability. Results also indicate statistically significant differences of the mean importance and mean performance scores of attributes based on gender, age, resident status, site and whether it was the respondents??? first time at the event. It was found that females place a higher importance on convenience attributes such as the cleanliness of restrooms, helpfulness of staff and feeling of safety, as compared to males. As well, repeat visitors placed a higher importance on program content attributes such as live entertainment, dance space and authentic culture, and also have a higher perception of performance for these attributes than first-time visitors. These findings result in direction for management in where to place future resources, as well as implications for promotional and advertising strategies.

A slowing economy coupled with new political initiative to rely on faith-based organizations to deal with social ills is raising concerns for cause-based organizations about the level of future donations. In this study, 1,414 survey respondents permitted comparisons between current, lapsed and non-donors to the American Lung Association (ALA) in terms of donation motives and their satisfaction via donating, concern about health issues, perceptions of ALA and demographics. Analyses consisted of analysis of variance, chi-square tests and use of the importance/performance technique. Similarities and differences among the three groups are noted and discussed. Implications for the ALA's fundraising activities are drawn.

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The main source of the international hotel guests are mostly comprised of the travelers from foreign countries; and among those foreign travelers, the Japanese are always in the highest rank to Taiwan and become the most important market. On the other hand, since Mainland China has liberalized the Chinese for sightseeing abroad, the travel industry all over the world are widely opening their arms and try to absorb this big cake. Taiwanese tourism industry as well has been preparing and standing by the arrival of the Mainland Chinese for the recent years. This is the reason why the study will focus on these two major markets of traveler and take a close look to see that when selecting the international hotel in Kaohsiung, whether it will be affected by the different culture, traveling attitude, social or economic back-ground etc., so as to compare the importance of hotel facility and service quality in the perception of guest¡¦s recognition and satisfaction, a comparison of the difference. The IPA (Importance-Performance Analysis) along with SWOT analysis are applied to analyze the selecting factors of Mainland Chinese and Japanese travelers to six international hotels in Kaohsiung. Those factors are categorized into 6 groups : 1. service quality; 2. business facilities; 3. value; 4. room & front desk; 5. food & recreation; 6. security; A questionnaire is formed according to this format and 700 copies has been printed.This survey was conducted from 8th, Mar. to 8th, Apr. in 2006, and finally returned with 161 valid in Japanese and 116 valid in simplified Chinese, the rate of valid returned is 39.5%. The results of the analyses come out as follows: To both Mainland Chinese and Japanese travelers, Kaohsiung International Hotels remain few strengths, there are only two items of strength, i.e. IDD service is available. & Hotel provides comfortable ambience. Kaohsiung International Hotels should take serious considerations to enforce their strength in competition to improve higher occupation rate, i.e. for Mainland Chinese travelers, High quality in-room temperature control; for Japanese, High quality in-room temperature control. and Hotel F&B is value for money; those improvements will promote travelers¡¦ satisfaction.

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The goal of this study was to develop an instrument to assist public park and recreation agencies in successfully repositioning their offerings in order to garner increased allocations of tax dollars. To achieve this, an agency must be perceived as providing public benefits, those that accrue to all members of its constituency. The scale sought to identify the importance of various community issues and perceptions of the agency's performance in contributing to those issues. A valid and reliable 36-item instrument was developed that encompasses nine distinct dimensions: Preventing Youth Crime, Environmental Stewardship, Enhancing Real Estate Values, Attracting and Retaining Businesses, Attracting and Retaining Retirees, Improving Community Health, Stimulating Urban Rejuvenation, Attracting Tourists, and Addressing the Needs of People who are Underemployed. These dimensions represent community issues that a park and recreation agency can contribute towards, and can therefore use as a basis for its repositioning efforts. Using a screening process by expert judges, a pretest sample of undergraduate students, and a sample of municipal residents, each of the importance and performance dimensions in the scale was judged to possess content validity, internal consistency, construct validity, and split-half reliability. A shortened version of the instrument was also demonstrated to possess internal consistency and construct validity. In a practical application, the scale proved useful in identifying repositioning options for the park and recreation department, both in isolation and relative to a public agency'competitor'. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are offered.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a family camp's performance from a consumer (parent) perspective. An Importance-Performance Analysis was used. Responses averages were plotted on a grid of importance versus performance with the overall means used as cross-hairs to create an action grid of four quadrants: keep-up-the-good-work (high importance/high performance), concentrate-here (high importance/low performance), possible-overkill (low importance/high performance), and low-priority (low importance/low performance). Findings indicated that parents are in large part receiving good performance on the factors that are important to them. Findings identified factors that were important to parents including some factors that camp directors were not previously aware of. Three of the five highest importance factor scores were regarding accommodations (clean facility, restrooms provided, and showers provided). All five of the top performance factor scores were regarding programming details. Implications for family camp providers and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Yes / This study aims to explore how marketers can use text mining to analyze actors, actions and performance effects of service encounters by building on the role theory. This enables hotel managers to use introduced methodology to measure and monitor frontline employees’ role behavior and optimize their service. Design/methodology/approach: The authors’ approach links text mining and importance-performance analysis with role theory’s conceptual foundations taking into account the hotel industry’s specifics to assess the effect of frontline hotel employees’ actions on consumer satisfaction and to derive specific management implications for the hospitality sector. Findings: This study identifies different actors involved in hotel frontline interactions revealing distinct role behaviors that characterize consumers’ perspectives of service encounters with different role types associated with front-office employees. This research also identifies role performance related to role behavior to improve service encounters. Practical implications: Customer–employee interactions can be assessed by user-generated contents (UGC). Performance evaluations relate to frontline employee roles associated with distinct role scripts, whereby different hotel segments require tailored role designs. Insights of this study can be used for service optimization, market positioning as well as for improving human resource management practices in the hotel industry. Originality/value: This study contributes to the service encounter literature by applying role theory in the text mining of UGC to assess frontline employees as actors and the effects of their actions on service quality delivery. / Science Foundation of Ministry of Education, PR China (Grant No. 21YJA630031)

Many small islands depend on sustainable tourism to attain long term economic prosperity and well-being for their citizens. As they become more dependent on tourism for their growth, they are more concerned with improving their competitiveness to adapt to a highly charged competitive environment and to the dynamic market conditions. The quintessential problem is how to achieve, maintain, and enhance competitiveness. There is limited research on tourism destination competitiveness (TDC), and much less on small island destinations. This study concentrates on TDC with a special focus on Malta as a small Mediterranean island in an attempt to develop a comprehensive TDC framework that is useful to small island destinations, and advances models and measures to assess competitiveness based on importance-performance analysis techniques (IPA). To achieve its research objectives, this study adopts a methodological position reflecting pragmatist assumptions and uses a sequential, exploratory, Mixed Methods design strategy. In the qualitative first phase of the design, thirty-five in-depth interviews are conducted with key ‘experts’ in tourism. It emerges from the participants’ description that sixty tourism-specific and business-related determinants provide a broad framework for assessing TDC. In the second phase, survey research is applied in order to develop quantitative measures to reveal the relative importance of the competitiveness factors, to assess the performance of the destination on these factors, and to identify priority areas that require immediate attention for improvement. Statistical measures and procedures are modified, introduced, and tested to establish a valid model for measuring TDC. Results show that the diagonal approach and the adjusted weighted partial ranking method for measuring importance and performance are the best combination that satisfies validity criteria. When applying these techniques to assess Malta’s competitiveness relative to a competing set of Mediterranean destinations, twelve tourism attributes and fourteen business-related factors are identified as priority areas for improvement, with the competitiveness deficiency gaps in business factors being notably higher than those in tourism-specific areas. This study has several implications for the development of TDC theory, methods, and application to small islands. It provides tourism researchers, policymakers, and practitioners with a theoretically robust framework that can assist them in the formulation of policies, the management of the destination, and the implementation of strategies to optimise resource allocation in order to enhance a destination’s competitive position. Given that there are few studies that focus on the development and measurement of TDC models for small islands, this study makes a valid contribution to knowledge. The methodological approaches adopted in this inquiry have substantive application in IPA studies both within and beyond tourism studies. The study’s outcomes are also transferable to small island destinations operating in similar environments.