INFLUENCING FACTORS OF FACIAL SPA TREATMENT ON VISIT INTENTION: AN IMPORTANCE-PERFORMANCE MATRIX ANALYSIS (IPMA) APPROACH

Nowadays, grooming is considered an essential part of life to maintaining and up keeping a healthy and hygienic outlook which plays a key role in social bonding. As it turns out, the desire to looking good has spawned a wide range of beauty products causing the beauty industry to thrive and grow at a rapid rate. In other words the Malaysian Beauty Salon Markets have become big business today, driven by a rising population, disposable incomes, urbanisation and increasing influence of western culture to look good and to feel good. The beauty market is valued at USD 119.24 million and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.23% in the next five years, to USD 153.86 million in 2015. As a result of a highly fragmented in this market, the need for differentiation from other salons is impendency for this industry. This research aims to study the different attributes of customer's concerns and reveals the final factors that generate customer intention to visit facial spa treatment centres in Malaysia. The effort is devoted to identifying those dimensions of services provided in facial spa treatment centres for instance, atmospheric, service quality, price, brand image and location which aid to build up a greater relationship with their patrons. Data is collected via questionnaires distribution from the target population of the female with the age range from 16-63 years old. A sample size of 308 was studied and data analysis involving Structural Equation Modeling SmartPLS version 3.0 software were used. Service quality reached the conclusion as the strongest predictor in influencing customer intention to visit facial spa treatment centres, followed by the factors of price and brand image. Further to that, an Importance-Performance matrix analysis was conducted in order to identify factors that need to be given priority for spa owners in Malaysia. These findings made contributions beyond the high context services for instance beauty salons, massage salons, hair salons, nail salons, financial consulting and medical care with the matching services characteristics.