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This chapter outlines the potential of phenomenology to illuminate how individuals experience the emotions replete within organizations. It employs one particular type of phenomenological approach known as Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The chapter considers how the hermeneutic and phenomenological foundations of this approach lend themselves to the study of affect. The chapter then clarifies and develops established IPA guidelines to render them more appropriate for research on emotions. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates how IPA can produce contextualized accounts that explore the role of emotions in individuals’ experiences of organizational events and processes.

The increasing popularity of immersive activities (e.g. immersive performing art (IPA) at tourism destinations calls for the need to understand customers’ immersive experiences and its impact on their attitudes and behavioral intentions. This study aims to conceptualize customers’ interactive experience in IPA and systematically examine how interaction in IPA experience shapes customers’ word-of-mouth (WOM) intention and thus generates business values for destination managers.

A two-step mixed-methods approach was used. The qualitative study was adopted to identify the salient dimensions of interaction in IPA experience and develop a context-specific measurement scale. Structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the theoretical model using partial least squares 3.3.0.

The results indicated that the three dimensions of interaction in IPA experience (i.e. parasocial interaction, narrative interaction and environmental interaction) are positively related to customers’ experiences of narrative transportation and self-expansion related to the IPA, which further influence their WOM intention.

This study considers IPA as an emerging form of immersive tourism activities and conceptualizes its interactive nature, and contributes to the understanding of how customers’ interactive experience helps them construct meanings through narrative transportation, and offers valuable guidance for IPA designers and destination management organizations.

This study aims to examine the relationship between emotional attachment (EA) and intelligent personal assistant (IPA) continuance intention. While existing theories emphasize purely rational and goal-oriented factors in terms of information technology (IT) continuance intention, this research examines how users' EA toward technology impacts their continuance intention in the absence of cognitive and habitual factors.

This study contextualizes attachment theory from the social psychology/consumer psychology literature to an IT application and formulates and tests a new model that is proposed in the context of IPA continuance. Five research hypotheses developed from contextualization and application of the theory were posited in a structural model and empirically validated using survey results from IPA users.

The results show that users' EA to IPA use significantly influences their IPA continuance intention, along with emotional trust and interaction quality with the IPA.

This study contextualizes attachment theory developed in the social psychology/consumer psychology literature to formulate and test a new model in the context of IPA continuance. This work contributes to the theoretical understanding by investigating IPA continuance intention in the absence of cognitive or habitual factors and fills a critical research gap in IT post-adoption literature. IPA is just one example of technologies to which individuals can form attachments and this research provides an important foundation for future research by positing and testing the value of EA in IT post-adoption behavior. This research also contributes to practical knowledge by inferring that IPA manufacturers, managers and vendors could extend their revenue streams by integrating product features that capture emotion.

Entrepreneurship is a complex social activity. Hence, knowledge production in the field requires inclusivity and diversity within research approaches and perspectives to appreciate the richness of the phenomenon. However, the dominance of positivist research in the field is visible, and the current qualitative research is also predominantly restricted to popular templates. This seems to have limited the understanding of entrepreneurship. This paper critically discusses the appropriateness of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as an innovative qualitative research methodology that facilitates a fuller appreciation of the richness and diversity of entrepreneurship.

This conceptual paper critically evaluates IPA's relevance for the stated purpose by reviewing both entrepreneurship and IPA literature. It discusses how IPA's philosophical underpinnings facilitate scholars to appreciate the wholeness of the phenomenon and provides literature informed data analysis guidance, thereby addressing some of the weaknesses of the qualitative research within the field.

Critical evaluation of the literature suggests that IPA is an appropriate research methodology for entrepreneurship. It has the potential to address some interesting and timely questions to elaborate, deepen and qualify existing theory or to study relatively unexplored areas within the field. The laid-out guidance helps scholars to develop informed rationale for their research decisions and to ensure quality and rigour in qualitative research.

This paper promotes the analysis of how people make sense of their experience as a valid way of knowing. IPA has a unique identity as it incorporates phenomenology, hermeneutics and idiography as a way to explore first-hand human experience to uncover qualitative understanding of entrepreneurship. The clear guidance and justifications in the paper promote scholarly confidence and address some preconceptions related to rigour, quality and validity of qualitative studies. Incorporating IPA into entrepreneurship, the paper also contributes to the demand for diversity, inclusivity and pluralism in qualitative research perspectives and approaches.

Conceptual aspects of this research aim to review issues and to introduce new ways to employ importance‐performance analysis (IPA), also called action‐grid analysis (AGA), in formulating valid research. The purpose of the exercises is facilitating understanding how a variety of matters are important for research being valid.

IPA/AGA, different types of IPA/AGA, and validity issues for these are introduced. Pursuing two types of IPA/AGA, based on different assumptions and thus distinct validity criteria, reinforces the need for new thinking regarding valid applications of IPA/AGA. Practically oriented training exercises reinforce understanding concepts introduced. Possible answers to exercises encourage thinking about matters that directly affect validity of actual research.

Unless IPA/AGA research is well conceived, properly executed, and soundly analysed, implications derived may be misleading. Training exercises show the reader values and pitfalls of considering IPA/AGA in formulating practically oriented research.

A limitation of the research is that detail results are only presented for two of at least five types of IPA/AGA.

This paper contributes to the overall understanding of the valid use of IPA/AGA as a tool in research. The paper also facilitates using IPA/AGA in teaching about research.

Importance performance analysis (IPA) is a technique widely used to assist organisations in developing marketing strategies and improving products or service quality. Many scholars have revised IPA to augment its effectiveness. However, this involves some unknown problems that could lead organisations to make wrong decisions. This paper aims to look at this issue.

As a solution, this paper introduces Taguchi's signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratio approach to treat ordered categorical data in analysing customer satisfaction and integrates it with gap analysis (GA) through S/N ratio to develop a modified IPA model. A Taiwan air‐conditioning manufacturer maintenance and repair service is illustrated to demonstrate the method.

According to the test case, the modified IPA model obtained more reliable results than the traditional IPA method, considering the central tendency and variance from different customer perceptions. The proposed method can determine exact marketing strategies and improvement directions for product or service quality attributes, reduce variance and (or) move performance to the target value.

This model overcomes the limitations of the traditional IPA model while retaining the merits of the traditional model. Using the modified IPA model an organisation can define its marketing strategies and take action to establish quality improvement activities. In other words, the organisation can avoid making wrong decisions when using the modified IPA model.

Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is an effective tool for firms to prioritise service quality attributes, but has limitations in evaluating and enhancing service quality within a competitive environment. The purpose of this paper is to present an evolved model of IPA – importance-performance benchmark vectors (IPBV) – as a benchmarking tool and investigate its applicability in the context of hotel service quality.

Empirical studies based on self-completion survey data from 150 customers of two full-service hotels in Taiwan were conducted in to examine the practical utility of IPBV.

Eight key benchmark typologies were identified and expressed as vectors in the IPBV model which are as follows: “sustainable advantage”, “potential strength”, “false advantage or outstanding advantage”, “cease-fire competition”, “false disadvantage or on-hand disadvantage”, “potential weakness”, “dangerous warning” and “head-on competition”.

The paper extends the methodology to more cases, and other service industries to test further the discriminatory power of the model and to explore the descriptors in the IPBV vector model. Alternative seven-point or nine-point Likert scales could be explored to test the discriminant validity using means. The alternative IPA diagonal approach focussing on GAP analysis may reveal alternative interpretations for the IPBV vector model. Other extended models of IPA, which include competitor analysis, should be compared in practice using a data set where both quantitative and qualitative data could be generated.

The paper proposes the two-dimensional IPBV model which retains the advantages of IPA, but also includes competitor or benchmark comparisons which enable organisations to analyse their relative competitive position. The two-part model provides both quantitative information and qualitative interpretation of relativities. The graphical matrix models provide simple quantitative analysis of attributes, whilst the IPBV vector model provides qualitative interpretations of the eight competitive market positions. Vector analysis enables the development of competitive strategies relative to benchmarks, or within a competitive set. Importance is retained and means that organisations can benchmark against a range of competitors prioritising specific attributes for resource allocation.

The interpretive utility of the model should be explored with practitioners and decision makers in the service industries. The model has been designed for practical use in industry to inform operational and strategic decision making, its usefulness in practice should be explored and the attitudes of practitioners to the model should be tested.

Traditional approaches to benchmarking have adopted a one-dimensional approach that does not include a measure of the relative importance of the service quality dimensions in specific markets. This research develops a two-dimensional advanced model of IPA, called IPBV, which is based on vector relationships between key attributes of service quality. These vectors are explored and described in competitive terms and the model is discussed with regard to its implications for industry, practitioners and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to present the improvement gap analysis (IGA), a simple method to direct improvement opportunities in services that overcomes limitations of the traditional IPA regarding excitement and basic attributes.

The proposed method is theoretically developed and simulated. The theoretical simulation explains why IGA overcomes limitations of the traditional importance performance analysis (IPA) and how it could identify the impact of excitement innovative attributes. A case study with 287 customers of supermarkets was used to empirically test IGA and compare it to IPA.

The case study confirmed that the traditional IPA may lead to wrong improvement decisions for basic and excitement attributes. It happens because IPA is based on current attributes' performance and considers the relationship between attribute performance and customer satisfaction as a linear one. Also, it cannot identify the impact of excitement innovative attributes on customer satisfaction. Using only information about the company's customers, IGA could differentiate neutral from excitement attributes in the case study and, differently from IPA, it correctly identified improvement decisions for basic and excitement attributes.

Although IGA can theoretically distinguish between excitement innovative and neutral attributes, the case study presented in the paper did not test any innovative attribute. All attributes were already experimented or known by the subjects. Future research should empirically test IGA's real capability to identify excitement innovative attributes.

Managers should be aware that IPA may lead to wrong improvement decisions. It may leave excitement attributes unnoticed or direct the company to the improvement of basic attributes that already have adequate performance. IGA can be a good substitute for IPA with the additional advantage that it does not need information about competitors in the analysis. Also, since service quality evaluation depends heavily on customer perception, IGA is particularly suitable to this industry, but it could also be used for product improvement.

The literature presents several papers discussing IPA's problems. Some papers present the possible decision errors of IPA when dealing with excitement and basic attributes. Fewer have tried to propose methods to overcome these problems. This paper confirms the problems of IPA and presents a simple method that overcomes these limitations, distinguishing between excitement and neutral attributes. Also, because it does not use information about competitors, it can be easily used by companies that have difficulties in gathering such information.

The purpose of this paper is to postulate that the technique of Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is currently underutilised in visitor management studies reported in the peer-reviewed marine wildlife tourism (MWT) research literature. Further, this paper provides insight into how IPA could inform future research and management of tourism experiences at marine wildlife destinations.

This paper synthesises learning gained from the natural area tourism and recreation literature that report the application of IPA in MWT and insights from a recent study at the Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury, Western Australia.

Although currently underutilized in MWT research, IPA is a relatively straightforward, easy to interpret, and, if correctly applied, a powerful tool that managers and researchers can employ to investigate and enhance visitor satisfaction in the short-term and for longer-term sustainability of the industry through visitor-informed tourism management.

Having identified the opportunity to enhance visitor experiences, site management and target species welfare through increased IPA research, this review provides a plain language introduction to the application of IPA and direct access to comprehensible academic discourses and exemplars for the technique. Moreover, in light of increasing tourism demand, IPA can assist in determining management options for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and evaluation of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) for the library and information science (LIS) community, as this method has only recently been used for exploring experiences of various phenomena related to LIS.

IPA is discussed within the phenomenological tradition. Two examples of recent IPA studies are examined in parallel to show application of the IPA method. Issues and challenges of applying IPA to LIS research questions are discussed.

IPA is an alternative phenomenological method, adding to the repertoire of qualitative methods used for LIS research. It was an effective method for exploring experience among information professionals: it was equally suitable for studying reference and information service work for academic library professionals and burnout experience for information and communication technology workers.

Only a few LIS studies have used IPA and no discussion or evaluation of the method has been published for this field. This paper provides a discussion of the method for LIS researchers interested in this emerging phenomenological method.