Abstract
With a growing number of Taiwanese tourists visiting Hokkaido, hot-spring resort accommodations in the prefecture have invested in management resources in preparation for prospective customers. It is an important management strategy to identify the customer behavior and interests, and to design accommodation plans accordingly. Consequently, this research involved performing a questionnaire survey in autumn 2001, mainly using the Pair Comparison Method. This survey is aimed at understanding the behavior and needs of Taiwanese tourists and identifying the services they demand in hot-spring resorts. Meanwhile, the Rating Scale Method is a conventional questionnaire approach widely used to examine expectations and importance. However, analysis using answers obtained by this method can cause some problems. For example, the answers in each item cannot be properly prioritized, the response distribution is not symmetrical, etc. To solve these problems, this paper presents a means of measuring of expectation using the Pair Comparison Method, which can directly compare items. Additionally, our analysis employs weights calculated by research findings. Since the weight is based on a ratio scale, it is possible to conduct analyses such as ANOVA. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) and cluster analysis found that Taiwanese visitors place greater importance on tangible factors than intangible factors.
