Abstract
This study consists of three phases to identify competitive attributes of service quality in the case of university foodservice. In phase I, ratio based importance-performance analysis (IPA) is applied to identify potential service gaps between what customers perceive as important service attributes and what their actual evaluations of those attributes are. The overall ratios suggest that university foodservice concentrates on price and value, food quality and taste, and cleanliness to improve its customer satisfaction level. Entropy value analysis conducted in phase II identifies that friendly service, food concepts, and atmosphere are key competitive priorities for the university foodservice. Phase III combines IPA and entropy method to obtain the final importance ratings of the customer needs. The result indicates that the critical areas for university foodservice to improve on are price and value, food quality and taste, and cleanliness. It is concluded that the proposed three-step approach to competitive analysis appears to be a viable means for university foodservice quality development.