Importance-Performance Analysis of Attractiveness Assessment for Festival: A Case of Sobaeksan Royal Azalea Festival

Since Martilla and James1 proposed IPA (ImportancePerformance Analysis), it has been widely applied in variety of settings in parks suggest likelihood varies according to the migrants’ satisfaction with crucial attributes’ performance2. However, IPA has been criticized by recent research due to the limitation of self-rated importance which might cause a bias in assessing marketing efficiency of a company or an organization3. Therefore, many researchers suggested modified IPA methodologies in order to identify the critical features which should be improved to evaluate customer satisfaction and performance4. This studied goals to find the application of the revised IPA technique to assess the performance of the festival and to support the effectiveness of evaluation of local festivals. This study concludes with providing suggestions and empirical evidence for the application of the revised IPA methodology and management implications for the Sobaeksan Royal Azalea Festival in Danyang, South Korea. 2. Literature Review


Introduction
Since Martilla and James 1 proposed IPA (Importance-Performance Analysis), it has been widely applied in variety of settings in parks suggest likelihood varies according to the migrants' satisfaction with crucial attributes' performance 2 . However, IPA has been criticized by recent research due to the limitation of self-rated importance which might cause a bias in assessing marketing efficiency of a company or an organization 3 . Therefore, many researchers suggested modified IPA methodologies in order to identify the critical features which should be improved to evaluate customer satisfaction and performance 4 . This studied goals to find the application of the revised IPA technique to assess the performance of the festival and to support the effectiveness of evaluation of local festivals. This study concludes with providing suggestions and empirical evidence for the application of the revised IPA methodology and management implications for the Sobaeksan Royal Azalea Festival in Danyang, South Korea.

Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)
IPA presents all importance and performance items in a twolevel grid 1 . In the four quadrant graph, performance is on the horizontal axis and importance is on the vertical axis. Based on IPA, researchers can point out the major weaknesses and provide a way to improve the targeted factors contributing to customer satisfaction shown in Figure 1.

Tourism Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction has been completely studied by researchers and marketing professionals for quality improvement and repurchase analysis. Hartman 5 developed a customer satisfaction concept that consists of three constructs (e.g., the systemic, affective, and cognitive).
Hunt 6 the cognitive level describes the service experience, the affective level refers to customer's psychological reaction toward the service performance and the systemic level discusses the gap between the expected and the received services. Customer satisfaction is later defined by customer's post-purchase evaluation of service delivered and comparison of customer's anticipations and the actual service experience 6 . This concept is further refined as the forecast-disconfirmation model by Oliver 7 with four elements: Satisfaction, disconfirmation, perceived performance and prepurchase anticipations. If a customer's anticipation is met or exceeded by the perceived service performance, the customer will be satisfied. But, if a customer's anticipation is not met by the perceived performance, disconfirmation will occur. Quality service that matches or exceeds customer's anticipation therefore drives satisfaction. Foster 8 , Haber and Lerner 9 and Oh 10 have been interested in measuring the overall levels of tourism satisfaction with their experiences in particular destinations as well as satisfaction with specific attributes at service encounter level such as in a hotel or at an attraction [8][9][10] . Since every tourism destination is endowed with diversified physical and cultural attributes along with the overall destination's attitude toward tourists and the refinement of service levels, the holistic impression made by the destination on tourists is a subject of research by tourism researchers. How satisfied are the tourists with the transportation, the attractions, and the hospitality of the local people, the food, the price and the service quality? It has been thus recognized that tourism satisfaction level can be attributed to different destination attributes including tangible products and prices to intangible service quality and the companionship of the natives 11 . Tourists' satisfaction with their experiences in a particular destination therefore environed all activities tourists participates in while their perceptions of service quality and staying at a destination, and pricing 12 .

Methodology
To identify the application of the revised IPA this study chose the Sobaeksan Royal Azalea Festival as the case. The Sobaeksan Royal Azalea Festival was held in Danyang, South Korea for five days; from May 29 to June 2 in 2013, and this festival is held annually. A self-administered questionnaire was used and an on-site survey technique was chosen in order to maximize engagement with the respondent and to obtain a random sample of people participating in the festival. Trained research assistants distributed a total of 350 questionnaires daily during the festival period. Visitors were asked to participate in the survey at the entrances/exit of the Sobaeksan Royal Azalea Festival site. A total of 328 surveys were completed and the response rate was 93.7%. The study used performance-only ratings that assess a festival's satisfaction. All questions of festival attributes were scored a 5-point Likert-type scale [strongly disagree (1)neutral (3) -strongly agree (5)].
The data was analyzed using PASW Statistics 18.0. Exploratory factor analysis was performed on the festival attributes in order to verify the construct validity and reliability. In order to obtain the implicit importance of the performance items, the following steps suggested by Kim et al. 4 were conducted: 1. Transform all attributes' performance into natural logarithmic form. 2. Compute partial correlation analysis for each festival attribute with overall performance satisfaction. 3. Plot all attributes on the IPA matrix with the mean of the performance rated by the festival visitors and the implicit importance derived from the performance.

Results
The demographic profile showed that males (43.6%) outnumbered females (56.4%). Only 6 % of visitors were 19 and younger. Over half of the respondents fell into the 30-59 age range (63.2%) with 13.7% aged 20-29 and 15.2% aged 60 and over. 57.9% of visitors were residents and people living close to Danyang, the city in which the festival took place (19.5). The KMO was larger than 0.6 (KMO = 0.88) and the p-value of Bartlett's sphericity test was almost zero 13 . The scree plot supported four factors, description 75.23% of the total variance shown in Table 1.
The mean scores of all 10 festival attributes ranged from 2.99 to 4.16. The mean (3.59) and the standard deviation (1.18) of the overall performance was and, respectively. The attributes "Festival program content", "Festival guide and services", and "Festival site" had above the overall satisfaction mean scores. From performance items the implicit importance of each festival attribute was derived, ranging from .57 to .14. The overall mean of the implicit importance of the attributes was .34 shown in Table 2. Figure 2 show all items placed in the four quadrants. Service facilities, layout of facilities, restaurant and food site, and lodging facilities and service were in the "Low priority" quadrant. Festival site, festival period, festival program content and Festival advertising/PR were located in the "Keep up the good work" quadrant. Festival guide and services were in the "Possible Overkill" quadrant. One attribute (Parking facilities) have been plotted in the "Concentrate here" quadrant.
This result indicates that festival organizers should focus more on management attention for parking facilities. Festival guide and services were located in the "Possible overkill" quadrant which is being delivered much more than their importance warrants. This attribute does not need excessive efforts and resources in order to satisfy visitors 14 .

Conclusion and Further Studies
This study provides empirical evidence which demonstrates the necessity of implicit importance derived from festival performance, and provides a major priority improvement opportunity 4 . In the "Concentrate here" quadrant, one item is identified: "Parking facilities". In the "Keep up the good work" quadrant, four items are identified: "Festival site", "festival program content", "festival advertising P/R" and "festival period". The second important attribute was "festival advertising/PR". It is suggested that the festival public relation department should inform people about the festival through various methods (e.g., use of internet website, magazines and radio announcements) in order to attract residents as well as non-residents. The first two most important attributes, "festival site" and "festival program content", belong to the "Festival Service and Advertising/Public Relations" dimension. This means that it is critical to improve the two attributes in order to increase the quality of the festival. Further study would be suggested in order to empirically test the revised IPA for other festival settings, so that festival organizers and policy makers can easily apply it in evaluations of festival performance.