Importance–performance analysis as a strategic tool for tourism marketers: The case of Taiwan’s Destination Image

Abstract

Today’s travelers, facilitated by increased leisure time, rising levels of disposable income and more efficient transportation networks, have the means to choose from among this much larger variety of destinations. As a result, tourism marketers are now faced with influencing consumer decision-making in an increasingly complex and competitive global marketplace. The purpose of this study is to engage discussion of different perceptions of travel to Taiwan particularly as a travel destination. It also will try to understand tourist’s grievances and shortcomings of Taiwan as a travel destination and attempt to offer suggestions on improving these things.

This study investigated international perceptions of Taiwan as a tourist destination and examined holistic attributes of a destination according to positive and negative contexts to determine the relation between travel customer satisfaction and travel attribute importance and performance. We also researched the level of difference in the perceived travel attributes of importance and performance as an indicator of service quality strengths and weaknesses.

Our study results reveal the overall image of Taiwan to be a fun, free, hospitable place with friendly locals and an interesting culture. Climate, opportunity to increase knowledge, safety, political stability, relaxation, and scenery all scored as positive aspects of Taiwan. Free elicitation also corroborates this with the top four physiological attributes as friendly, fun, safe, and relaxing. Taiwan could use these attributes to its marketing advantage.

Keywords

Tourist destination image tourism marketing tourism image formation international tourist destination

Introduction

Today’s travelers, facilitated by increased leisure time, rising levels of disposable income and more efficient transportation networks, have the means to choose from among this much larger variety of destinations. As a result, tourism marketers are now faced with influencing consumer decision-making in an increasingly complex and competitive global marketplace (Echtner and Ritchie, 2003). According to Chen and Tsai (2007), tourism has been seen as the driving force for regional development. Successful tourism can increase destination’s tourist receipts, income, employment, and government revenues. How to attract the tourists to revisit and/or recommend the destination to others is crucial for the success of destination tourism development.

Llodrà-Riera et al. (2015) mentioned out that the images of a tourist destination often depend on information and contents generated by travelers, suppliers, and residents. As the tourism marketplace is becoming more highly competitive, destination marketers are adopting branding techniques to craft an identity which focuses on the uniqueness of their products, namely destinations. Similar to those marketing consumer products, destination marketers have had to turn to branding to distinguish their destinations to convey a positive message that will motivate tourists to visit them (Chen and Phou, 2013). People are thus likely to dispose of pre-determined images when thinking about a certain country (Arnett, 2002). They have an image in their minds about a place and they want to go and see it, i.e. the main reason of travel demand is the image in the minds of people of what they will see upon arrival to a destination. Hence you get phrases in the business world about ‘destination-marketing’, ‘formation and marketing destination image’, and others. The place images leave impressions on us, and these impressions open up areas for marketing. It has been acknowledged that the destination image perceived by tourists plays an important role in their decision-making, destination choice, post-trip evaluation, and future behaviors (e.g. Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Echtner and Ritchie, 1991; Gallarza et al., 2002).

Due to globalization and peoples’ increased urge to travel and see different places. Taiwan is in a position to increase its tourism because it offers numerous sights and enjoyment, and its Chinese culture differs substantially from North America. The sparsely populated mountains in Central Taiwan with their diverse wildlife contrast sharply with the heavily populated cities on the west coast. Beerli and Martin (2004) reported that changes in the tourism sector, competition among products and tourist destinations, and changes in tourist expectations and habits require that tourist destinations must be conceived as brands that must be managed from a strategic viewpoint. This study investigated international perceptions of Taiwan as a tourist destination and examined holistic attributes of a destination according to positive and negative contexts to determine the relation between travel customer satisfaction and travel attribute importance and performance. We also researched the level of difference in the perceived travel attributes of importance and performance as an indicator of service quality strengths and weaknesses.

Literature review

Research on destination image

Tourism images are critical to the success of any destination, particularly because of how they affect the level of satisfaction with the tourist experience. Destination image is generally interpreted as a compilation of beliefs and impressions based on information processing from various sources over time that result in a mental representation of the attributes and benefits sought of a destination (Zhang et al., 2014). It comprises the image characteristics of a destination that subsequently influence tourist decisions to visit particular vacation destinations (Tapachai and Waryszak, 2000). Certain studies have shown that destination image is one of the strongest influences on future behavior, and tourist experiences at a destination form the tourist image of the destination (Beerli and Martin, 2004; Kim, 2014). Destination image usually plays two crucial behavioral roles: (a) to influence the destination choice decision-making process and (b) to condition after decision-making behaviors including participation (on-site experience), evaluation (satisfaction), and future behavioral intentions (intention to revisit and willingness to recommend) (Bigne et al., 2001; Lee et al., 2005).

Chi and Qi (2008) mentioned that a positive image deriving from positive travel experiences results in a positive evaluation of a destination. Frías et al. (2012) demonstrated that the formation of a tourist destination image through information sources is often influenced by the culture effect. The results show that the formation of a destination’s previsit image among tourists, based on the information sources they use, is moderated by the level of uncertainty-avoidance of their national cultures. Furthermore, a loyal tourist could continually produce positive word-of-mouth effects with his or her networks of friends and relatives, and such recommendations are typically treated as a reliable information source in tourists’ image formation and decision-making (Zhang et al., 2014).

Application of importance–performance analysis in tourism related research

Importance–performance analysis (IPA) has been applied to different areas in the services industries since it was introduced by Martilla and James in the 1970s, and is extensively used in hospitality and tourism research because of its simplicity (Lai and Hitchcock, 2015). Anecdotal evidence also suggests that studies applying IPA are frequently presented at various hospitality and tourism conferences.

The use of IPA has been widely reported in the tourism marketing literature (Murdy and Pike, 2012). In their research, IPA was utilized to measure destination marketers’ perceptions of the efficacy of customer relationship marketing initiatives, and then rated their own organization’s performance across the same range of initiatives. A key finding was that mean importance was higher than perceived performance for every item.

Sörensson and von Friedrichs (2013) also use IPA to examine the performance of one particular tourist destination with regard to social and environmental sustainability, and to establish whether international tourists and national tourists differ in the sustainability factors they consider important. By using IPA technique can help tourism stakeholders in diagnosing underlying deficiencies and setting priorities in tourism development. As a result, a more efficient allocation of limited resources could be achieved to improve tourist satisfaction and destination competitiveness. IPA gained popularity for its simplicity and applicability in explaining customer satisfaction and suggesting management strategies. However, its empirical validity and usefulness were questioned due to the lack of standard criteria, along with conceptual and methodological issues. Sever (2015) investigated these issues and suggested a novel approach to advance and evaluate the performance of IPA based on the receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis. The establishment of clear criteria and statistical evaluation is indispensable for authorizing the application of IPA in tourism research.

Research design and methodology

The purpose of this study is to gage different travel perceptions on visiting Asia, and more specifically Taiwan. This will help tourism promoters get an idea of what kind image people have of traveling to Asia. This study also helps to further see the image attributes and image shortcomings of Taiwan. After this information is understood and assessed it can be used as a basis for marketing in order to give the destination a greater appeal. This information could be vital to tour operators and other marketers who are interested in attracting visitors to the region.

Once the survey’s results have been analyzed, travel perceptions and images of Taiwan will come to light and compared with each other. These results could hopefully be used for marketing purposes. The results will hopefully again be used to better understand preferences and ratings of different niche markets within the context of tourism in Taiwan. Tour operators will hopefully take an interest in this for the purposes of creating better customer service, and becoming more competitive. They can achieve this by being more in tuned to market demand. This study examined and contrasted the perceptions of international visitors on their Taiwan experience. Various nationalities were investigated and grouped together for cultural relevance and travel within diverse niche groups. Their travel preferences and destination image perceptions of Taiwan were compared and contrasted.

According to government’s statistic data, Taiwan’s tourism market was usually broken down as such: 20–24% of visitors are from Japan, 13–20% of visitor are from Hong Kong and Macao, 6–9% of Visitors are usually from the USA, 13- 18% are from South-East Asia, 1–2% are from Australia, New Zealand, 3–5% are from Europe, 2–4% are from Korea, and 23–27% are from other nationalities. These were the groups to be considered to this study when viewing Taiwan’s destination image.

There are total 49 quantitative factors have been shown in previous studies (Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Beerli and Martin, 2004; Chen and Phou, 2013; Etchner and Ritchie, 1993; Walmsley and Young, 1998). They are significant reasons why people travel in general. A pilot study was performed to test the relevance of previous studied factors effecting tourist destination selection before the main survey. From the 49 quantitative questions on the pilot study, 29 questions had a mean score lower than 3.3 so they were deemed irrelevant to the Taiwan travel context. The final questionnaire included 20 attributes to deals with the measurement of destination image.

Dillman (2000) suggested that the mixed-mode administration is a more dynamic approach to surveying. He noted that the different approaches ‘‘provide an opportunity to compensate for the weaknesses of each method’’. According to Cobanoglu et al. (2001) and Dillman et al. (2009), the use of two or more survey modes in a single data collection effort is acceptable and usually raises the possibility of improved response rates. A sampling plan is developed to ensure that certain types of respondents will be included. The survey instrument was revised and finalized based on the pilot study of 31 international travelers around the Tainan downtown area. The participators were from seven different areas. The final survey questionnaire has five main sections, which were mainly extracted from previous studies (Buhalis, 2000; Chen and Hsu, 2000; Chen and Phou, 2013; Ritchie and Zins, 1978; Smith and Mackay, 2001; Ziethmal and Berry, 1985). Section one is personal information, section two is questions having to do with importance perceptions on traveling. Section three of the survey deals performance perceptions of visitors to Taiwan. The fourth section is the free elicitation section included three qualitative questions. Respondents have been asked to give their general impressions of Taiwan. The fifth section has a few questions concerning customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. These questions just ask about the overall account of Taiwan’s service quality and customer loyalty.

The IPA was employed to demonstrate visitor perceptions of Taiwan. This easy-to-use method identifies improvement priorities based on the conceptual foundations of multiattribute choice models. This could have managerial importance because diverse market segments may show various expectations of impressions on travel destination items, such as safe beaches and others.

Results and analysis

Survey distribution

The study adopted convenience sampling method. The population is the inbound visitors to Taiwan include the people who have had the experience in Taiwan. The questionnaire distributed in two ways. First is randomly distribute to respondents by convenience sampling method in Tainan and the surrounding area, total distributed to 150 respondents, interviewed face to face, and received 123 cased in valid. Second is posted and promoted online via various websites; as well it was sent to friends and forwarded to friends of friends via e-mail. Total collected 257 valid cases.

The survey criteria required that respondents not be Taiwanese or native to Taiwan. Those who participated in this were mostly found in Tainan area. Others were found in other parts of the South of Taiwan. Total 40.1% of respondents were from North America, while 5.1% were from Japan, 1.2% was from Hong Kong or Macau; 23% were from South-East Asia, 13% were from Europe, 4.3% were from Australia/New Zealand, and 13.2% were from other countries.

The respondents filled out nine categories of personal information, meaning that the market was segmented into nine different categories. The respondent profile is summarized as Table 1.

Table 1.

Summary chart for respondents personal information.

Respondents	Category	Number of respondents	Percentage of respondents (%)
Gender	Male	153	59.5
Gender	Female	104	40.5
Age	1–20	7	2.7
	21–29	120	46.7
	30–45	98	38.1
	45–60	25	9.7
	60⁺	7	2.7
Education Level	Some high school	1	0.4
	High school	20	7.8
	Undergraduate	88	34.2
	Grad school	108	42.0
	Postgraduate	40	15.6
Marital status	Single	159	61.9
	Married	63	24.5
	Engaged	14	5.4
	Divorced	15	5.8
	Common law	6	2.3
Travel purpose	Leisure	85	33.1
	Business	36	14.0
	Friends or relations	49	19.1
	Other	87	33.9
How many times have you been to Taiwan	First time	62	24.1
	2–5	69	26.8
	6–12	23	8.9
	More than 12	10	3.9
	Lived here longer than a year	93	36.2
How often do you travel abroad	Less than once a year	90	35.0
	About once or twice a year	110	42.8
	Several times a year	37	14.4
	Frequently	20	7.8
Income (US$)	0–15,000	103	40.1
	16,000–30,000	66	25.7
	31,000–50,000	50	19.5
	51,000–100,000	27	10.5
	Above 100,000	11	4.3
Point of origin	North America	103	40.1
	Japan	13	5.1
	Hong Kong/ Macau	3	1.2
	South East Asia	59	23.0
	Europe	34	13.2
	Australia/New Zealand	11	4.3
	Other	34	13.2

Importance–performance analysis

Performing an IPA on Taiwan was the main construct of this study on measuring Taiwan as a travel destination. The other parts of this study were conducted in conjunction with IPA being the primary focus. In an IPA analysis, the top right quadrant is the optimal locality for a factor. The bottom right is the concentration section with high importance, low performance. The bottom left is low priority, and the top left is known as overkill or try too hard.

The 20 factors that were assessed were deemed to be the most crucial factors for vacationing by visitors who traveled to Taiwan. This makes the factors salient regarding traveling in Taiwan. The factors are cited in the following and in Table 2, as well as how they appeared on the IPA scatter dot chart (importance–performance grid).

Table 2.

List of factors being assessed by importance–performance analysis.

Scenery	DI, 1	Accessibility	DI, 11
Hospitality	DI, 2	Opportunity for adventure	DI, 12
Costs	DI, 3	Atmosphere	DI, 13
Safety	DI, 4	Opportunity to increase knowledge	DI, 14
Climate	DI, 5	Quality of service	DI, 15
Food	DI, 6	Political stability	DI, 16
Relaxation	DI, 7	Local people	DI, 17
Accommodation	DI, 8	Authenticity	DI, 18
Beaches	DI, 9	Fun	DI, 19
Cleanliness	DI, 10	Freedom	DI, 20

The first importance–performance grid (Figure 1) is the overall results of the 257 people surveyed. These people were primarily visitors currently staying in Taiwan or who had been in Taiwan at one time or another. The overall results of the IPA analysis appear to be acceptable. The grand mean was importance 3.8848, and performance 3.7437, which is a high average with numerous factors in a small grouping.

The top right quadrant (keep up the good work) had items 17 (local people), 2 (hospitality), 19 (fun), and 20 (freedom). These items scored high in the overall Taiwan context. The bottom right had the most items, but the grand mean cross hair is high and most are above 3.5 in the performance section. Factors 10 (cleanliness), 12 (opportunity for adventure), 13 (atmosphere), 3 (costs), 18 (authenticity), 15 (service quality), 1 (scenery), 7 (relaxation), 4 (safety), 14 (opportunity to increase knowledge), and 1 (scenery) are factors that should be improved. Factor 10 (cleanliness) and somewhat factor 12 (opportunity for adventure) are items that need overall improvement. Factors 13 (atmosphere) and 3 (costs) are also relatively weak. Most items in this category had a performance rating above 3.6, which is an acceptable score, but ended up in this category because of a high grand mean.

Moving clockwise to the next quadrant, items 9 (beaches), 8 (accommodation facilities), 6 (food), 16 (political stability), and 11 (accessibility) comprise the low priority group. These items have the lowest importance and performance scores, making them low priority to the overall Taiwan scene. However, items 8, 6, 16, and 11 had an importance score of over 3.6, which is significant and transfers these items to be important. Item 16 has a high score near the cross hair of the chart. Factor 5 (climate) is the only item that is in the overkill category of climate and that is uncontrollable. The importance–performance grid indicated that Taiwan has room to improve on aspects of cleanliness, costs, atmosphere, and accessibility, but shows Taiwan’s image as a destination to be fun and free with a safe, interesting culture and nice local people.

The IPA results are the overall results from travelers worldwide. This section categorizes respondents into various sections based on area of origin, including North America, Asia, and other regions. Therefore, markets must be sensitive regarding Taiwan beaches and cleanliness and focus on accessibility, food, atmosphere, costs, and opportunity for adventure. They should exert considerable efforts toward these items to ensure customer satisfaction on these items to insure a pleasant travel experience.

North American region

North America comprised approximately 40% of the total respondents, making them the largest group of people to complete the survey. North Americans had a high grand mean (the cross hair of the chart) of importance value 3.8388 and performance 3.7197, which is similar to the grand mean of the overall results.

The North American results varied from the overall results. The top right quadrant had more items, including items 19 (fun), 17 (local people), 20 (freedom), 2 (hospitality), 1 (scenery), and 4 (safety). Scenery and safety are located in this quadrant for North Americans.

The bottom right or the concentration category included items 7 (relaxation), 13 (atmosphere), 18 (authenticity), and 3 (costs). These items were extremely close to the top right category and all had a decent mean score. The bottom left area, which is low priority, had numerous items, including 9 (beaches), 10 (cleanliness), 8 (accommodation facilities), 15 (service quality), 11 (accessibility), and 12 (opportunity for adventure). These items had a lower performance rating, but had a low importance rating. However, only item 9 (beaches) had an importance rating of less than 3.5. This means that item 12 is probably the only item that does not require attention.

Finally, the overkill category had items 5 (climate), 16 (political stability), 6 (food), and 14 (opportunity to increase knowledge), all of which were overkill for North Americans in Taiwan. This is intriguing because these items refer to cultural aspects such as eating and learning, which may not be interesting for the average North American, but could be priorities in Taiwan. Managers and marketers in the industry should focus on and improve accommodation facilities, accessibility, and service quality (Figure 2).

Asian region

Respondents from Asia comprised 29.3% of the total respondents, many of whom were from Southeast Asia. Asian visitors had a high grand mean, with an importance score of 4.006 and a performance score of 3.732, which are both higher than the overall results and the North American results.

The top right category for the Asian results differed from that of North America. The items were 19 (fun), 20 (freedom), 2 (hospitality), 7 (relaxation), and 15 (quality of service). The local people were not considered as important to Asian visitors as to North American visitors, whereas political stability, quality of service, and accessibility were higher than for North American visitors.

The bottom right category items were 4 (safety), 3 (costs), 1 (scenery), and 10 (cleanliness). Item 3 (cost) scored the worst, probably because the Taiwan GDP is higher than several countries in Southern Asia, where most of the respondents resided. Item 4 (safety) was nearly in the top right box and its performance was relatively good, with a high importance rating.

The bottom left or low-priority area items were 9 (beaches), 6 (food), 12 (opportunity for adventure), and 13 (atmosphere). These are low-priority items for Asian travelers to Taiwan. Items 6 (food) and 13 (atmosphere) received a low performance rating. Because their importance is high, they should be of concern.

For Asian visitors, many items landed in the overkill category. These included 5 (climate), 17 (local people), 11 (accessibility), 14 (opportunity to increase knowledge), 18 (authenticity), 16 (political stability), and 8 (accommodation facilities). Items 5 and 8 were the items of lowest importance, whereas the others fell into this category because of a high grand mean. Items 11 (accessibility) and 16 (political stability) nearly fell directly into the performance line. All had an importance rating of over 3.7, which is high, thus these items should be considered to be in the keep-up-the-good-work category. Marketers and mangers in the travel destination industry should concentrate on food, opportunity for adventure, atmosphere, cleanliness, costs, and scenery and must exert efforts to please travelers in these travel aspects (Figure 3).

Other regions

Approximately 30% of respondents indicated that they were from regions outside of North America or Asia. The grand mean or the cross hairs on the chart were at 3.829 for importance and 3.692 for performance. Although the cross hair was lower than the other two regions, it was acceptable. The other regions scored items 17 (local people), 1 (scenery), 2 (hospitality), 19 (fun), and 20 (freedom) as doing well for Taiwan. The concentration category items 3 (costs), 4 (safety), 14 (opportunity to increase knowledge), 7 (relaxation), and 18 (authenticity) are here. Item three (costs) alone scored poorly. The others were all above or approximately 3.6, which is a strong showing.

Item 14 (opportunity to increase knowledge) is in this category, whereas in all the other charts (except overall) it is in the overkill quadrant. The low-priority category included items 10 (cleanliness), 12 (opportunity for adventure), 8 (accommodation), 13 (atmosphere), 9 (beaches), 6 (food), and 11 (accessibility). Item 10 (cleanliness) scored relatively low and slightly high on importance. Item 12 (opportunity for adventure) had a lower performance ranking, with a slightly high importance rating. Item 9 (beaches) was the least important item again. Items 13 (atmosphere), 6 (food), and 11 (accessibility) were all near the mean, whereas Item 8 had low importance with high performance, placing it in the overkill category. The overkill category contained items 5 (climate), 15 (quality of service), and 16 (political stability). All of these items had a high importance higher than or approximately 3.6, all of which fared well.

Therefore, marketers and mangers in the travel destination industry should concentrate on costs, opportunity for adventure, and beaches and exert efforts to please travelers in these travel aspects (Figure 4).

Infrequent travelers

The ANOVA results showed that groups within the travel frequency category were grouped together with significance. We therefore conducted an additional IPA analysis by segmenting the respondents according to their diverse travel frequency results (Table 3).

Table 3.

Analysis of variance outcomes of similarities between travel frequency and travel performance factor one.

Duncan Travel frequency	Number of respondents	Sub-categories
Duncan Travel frequency	Number of respondents	1	2
Frequently	20	3.3583
Several times a year	37	3.5135
Less than once a year	90		3.6852
About once or twice a year	110		3.7303
Sig.		0.172	0.071

Two groups were included for this IPA breakdown: travelers who travel less than once a year or once or twice a year, and travelers who travel frequently or several times a year.

The results of the following chart show the results for infrequent travelers. The grand mean for importance is 3.901 and 3.771 for performance. This is a high result and similar to that of groups according to regions. This group is relatively larger than the other group, with approximately 77.8% of respondents.

The top right quadrant or the keep-up-the-good-work category, included 8 items which is an excellent result. These are items 19 (fun), 20 (freedom), 2 (hospitality), 17 (local people), 1 (scenery), 7 (relaxation), and 4 (safety). Items 19 (fun), 20 (freedom), 4 (safety), 1 (scenery), and 2 (hospitality) had a fairly high importance. Item 19 (fun) had very high performance. The bottom right or concentration category only had one item, item 3 (costs). The bottom left or low priority included items 9 (beaches), 10 (cleanliness), 12 (opportunity for adventure), 13 (atmosphere), 6 (food), 8 (accommodation), 15 (quality of service), 18 (authenticity), and 11 (accessibility). Although this category included 9 items, only items 10 and 9 had low performance, and all the other items had an importance mean score of above 3.6, which is acceptable and therefore makes these items a priority of concern. For other travelers, items 12 (opportunity for adventure) and 13 (atmosphere) require some improvement. The top left quadrant or the overkill area included items 16 (political stability), 14 (opportunity to increase knowledge), and 5 (climate). Items 16 (political stability) and 14 (opportunity for adventure) had an importance score of over 3.7, which is sufficiently high to place in the top right category. The overall performance of this group is acceptable, with only one item landing in the concentration category. Therefore, marketers and mangers in the travel destination industry should concentrate on costs, opportunity for adventure, atmosphere, and cleanliness and exert efforts to please travelers in these travel aspects (Figure 5).

Frequent travelers

Travelers who travel frequently only comprised approximately 21% of the respondents and had a lower grand mean compared to the other groups. The grand mean is importance 3.828 and performance 3.674.

The keep-up-the-good-work category included items 19 (fun), 20 (freedom), 2 (hospitality), 17 (locals), 1 (scenery), 18 (authenticity), and 3 (costs). Items 4 (safety) and 13 (atmosphere) appeared in the concentration section. Item 4 (safety) is on the line and had a good score. The low priority category had items 9 (beaches), 10 (cleanliness), 7 (relaxation), 6 (food), 12 (opportunity for adventure), 11 (accessibility), and 8 (accommodation). Items 7 (relaxation), 6 (food), 12 (opportunity for adventure), and 10 (cleanliness) all had a high importance rating and should be priority items for this market segment. Finally, the overkill category included Items 5 (climate), 14 (opportunity to increase knowledge), 16 (political stability), and 15 (quality of service). Items 15, 14, and 5 all had a high importance value and scored well. Item 16 (political stability) had a far lower importance rating for this segment than any of the other market segments. Therefore, marketers and mangers in the travel destination industry should concentrate on cleanliness, opportunity for adventure, accommodation facilities, and a little on food and must exert efforts to please travelers in these travel aspects (Figure 6).

Conclusions and suggestions

According to the importance–performance grid, North Americans viewed Taiwan fairly positively. Opportunity for adventure, accessibility, cleanliness, beaches, service quality, and accommodation facilities are areas that should be improved for these travelers. Accessibility poses a problem with the language barrier, but did not score poorly according to the chart. The other aspects should be improved upon or catered to in order to please North American visitors.

The results for Asian visitors showed that beaches, food, and atmosphere require improvement, whereas costs, opportunity for adventure, cleanliness, and scenery were slightly poor. Scenery is apparently not as special to them as to travelers from other parts of the world. Asian visitors generally enjoy Taiwanese culture and perceive it to be comfortable, interesting, and pleasant. Visitors from other regions indicated that Taiwan should improve its beaches, cleanliness, and opportunity for adventure.

For infrequent travelers, Taiwan should improve beaches, cleanliness, atmosphere, opportunity for adventure, and costs. For frequent travelers, authenticity and hospitality received high priority compared with the other groups, and local people and scenery also scored high with this group. The fact that experienced travelers value Taiwan for these things is good news. Taiwan scored well overall for friendliness and hospitality, but came up short for cleanliness and adventure. Perhaps it could try to create something more edgy or more easily accessible for foreigners who have trouble finding their way around in a foreign culture.

Chen and Phou (2013) indicated that tourists attribute personality characteristics to destinations, and that destination image is the main antecedent of destination personality. Therefore, destination marketers are advised to concentrate on developing promotional campaigns that emphasize not only destination image, but also the distinctive and attractive personality of each destination. As functional attributes of tourist destinations alone no longer help destinations to attract travelers, because of the high product similarity and growing substitutability (Pike and Ryan, 2004; Usakli and Baloglu, 2011), developing a stronger, more favorable and distinctive destination personality is a good marketing strategy, and may also offer a well-defined form of sustainable competitive advantage (Freling and Forbes, 2005).

Taiwan is perceived as being fun, free, diverse, and pleasant, which all crucial aspects that people like and enjoy when on vacation. Taiwan provides numerous ways in which people can learn and view a diverse culture. Taiwan is viewed in this study as a place where people can learn while living in convenient surroundings that are safe, fun, free, and hospitable. Taiwan should continue seeking for new and intriguing approaches to market itself through diverse and new aesthetics, thereby appealing to various population segments.

The results of this study suggest that Taiwan should package itself as an urban convenient fun filled, pleasant, free island with an interestingly strange culture with extra pleasant people. Taiwan should express its contradictions uninhabited mountains close to large urban cites. Taiwan could present itself as a world unto itself that foreigners can learn from open their minds to understand and enjoy. The fact that Taiwan rated high on opportunity to increase knowledge shows that they should target people who travel for this reason and not so much as a sun and sand location. Taiwan’s unique wildlife and country side could also be used as a selling point with its exotic mountainous jungle made accessible with developed infrastructure. This should be used as a selling point to North Americans or people who live in countries with a totally different climate and plant life. Travelers coming from nearby Asian countries were not impressed with Taiwan’s scenery as much as North American’s were.

Taiwan as mentioned earlier should market its culture and way of life. It should show off the people’s easy going and easy-to-deal with nature next to an appealing aesthetic appeal and landscape. They could juxtapose this with other pushy Asian cultures that have vendors constantly trying to sell things and would not take no for an answer. Taiwan’s old and powerful culture shown with the civility of the people in a modern environment is also an interesting selling point to explore. Taiwan could juxtapose images like the following: modern living, next to old culture busy city streets next to the quiet countryside, busy night markets next to breath taking mountain tea shops. These interesting contradictions of Taiwan life could be made appealing.

Taiwan should also try and find new and alternative ways to market itself, that are unconventional to traditional regular tourism branding (e.g. sun and sand) locations and promotion but contain a high level of appeal and intrigue. Its image could be pleasant, informative, peaceful, and busy, while trying to exclude its short comings. Redefining and adjusting its image in new and appealing ways is also important.

This research points out that Taiwan should stay away from marketing its beaches and that sometimes people think that it is dirty and often redundant and boring. Taiwan needs to break these images by presenting itself in ways that these situations are not the case. This is easily done because many places in Taiwan are not dirty, and boredom is probably more of a state of mind due to being a cultural outsider. Taiwan needs to exploit its strengths (e.g. friendly, safe, people easy to deal with) and continue to understand and redefine the appealing nature in itself. Taiwan is seen as being fun, free, different and pleasant. These are all very important things people like and enjoy when on vacation. Taiwan provides many ways in which people can learn things and see different ways people live and understand life.

From a methodological point of view, the findings demonstrate that the IPA approach is a useful tool to enable destination marketers and managers to differentiate their destination products. Since each destination has different roles and level of involvement with the tourism industry, this study does not attempt to recommend an ideal destination position, but rather provides destination marketers with information that can lead to destination repositioning. Our study also can help individuals make decisions during their visit to Taiwan, and allow destination marketers to better understand how tourists and potential tourists view and choose their destinations.

This study has only focused on one tourist destination (Taiwan), which may limit the generalizability of the findings. And this study employed a convenience sampling method, so the sample may not reflect the entire population of visitors to the research site. Suggest future research can duplicate this study with random sampling methods and other tourist destinations would increase our understanding of this important research concept. According to Kladou and Mavragani (2015), this kind of research conclusions can offer marketing scholars more understanding into their destination image and distinct significance. Implications for tourism practitioners stem from the dilemma of focusing on several key themes in their mass-media marketing efforts, as is suggested for more mainstream markets (e.g. Chen and Uysal, 2002), or capturing the ‘niche’ image held by only a few tourists, as suggested by Pan and Li (2011) in the context of online marketing. Finally, the research provides guidelines to practitioners so that they can develop a greater understanding of what tourists consider to be significant. Even if those limitations, it seems to be no doubt that Taiwan should promote their image continuously if they would compete effectively in the competitive tourism market, since the tourism image will affect tourists’ post-visit evaluation and the intention of re-visiting in the future.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Chi-Ruey Jeng is an Assistant Professor in Department of Leisure & Tourism Management, Shu-Te University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His research interests include aviation management and tourism management. He has published numerous scholarly articles in tourism and aviation related journals.

Adam T Snyder is a Master of Institute of International Management, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.

Ching-Fu Chen is a Distinguished Professor in Department of Transportation and Communication Management Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. He has published numerous scholarly articles in, among others, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Economics, Accident Analysis and Prevention, Transportation Research Part A, Transportation Research Part F, Transport Policy, and Journal of Air Transport Management.

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