Assessing attendees’ satisfaction at a craft beer festival by means of an importance-performance analysis

Purpose: Craft beer tourism and beer festivals are subjects of increasing academic discourse, although few theoretical frameworks exist that focus on the measurement of attendee satisfaction at such festivals. Craft beer lovers visit many of these breweries and attend festivals to experience local, regional, national and international brews. The goal of this study is to establish a reliable way of assessing how satisfied attendees were with their experience at a particular craft beer festival. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative methodology in the form of a survey research design was used. A total of 313 usable questionnaires were collected from attendees at the Capital Craft Beer Festival in Pretoria, South Africa. This study used the importance-performance analysis (IPA) model to determine which event performance attributes would improve customer satisfaction. Findings/results: The findings revealed that 8 items in the importance–performance grid were located in the ‘low priority’ quadrant, 3 items were in the ‘concentrate here’ quadrant, 1 item was in the ‘possible overkill’ quadrant and 15 items were in the ‘keep up the good work’ quadrant, which indicated that those attributes generated high satisfaction and that event organisers should sustain their performance. Practical implications: This study should improve event services for practitioners and policymakers by enabling them to recognise visitors’ demands more easily and to respond better to those demands. Originality/value: This study examined the discrepancies between visitors’ expectations and perceived performance by using the IPA model, which was created by Martilla and James in 1977.