The Kano model categorizes customer satisfaction into five types based on product or service qualities, and is used by businesses to evaluate design and performance. It departs from previous models by suggesting that quality and performance are subjective.
There are many models to help categorize and explain customer satisfaction in the business field. The Kano model was developed by a Japanese professor named Noriaki Kano in the 1980s and separates customer satisfaction into five distinct categories based on certain qualities of products or services: attractive qualities, one-dimensional qualities, indispensable qualities, indifferent qualities, and reverse. Businesses can expect varying degrees of sales success and repeat business based on which of these qualities most often satisfies their customers.
Much of business can be organized into two broad categories: marketing and customer satisfaction. Marketing deals with everything that companies do to make a sale and get consumers to buy their products or services. Customer satisfaction refers to what the company does to satisfy its customers after the sale, including maintaining and servicing its products. It also involves consistent product quality and trying to get repeat purchases from customers.
The Kano model departs from previous models or explanations of consumer behavior by suggesting that the quality and performance of products and services are in the eye of the beholder. Previous thinking suggested that the better the product or service, the more satisfied a customer would be with that product or service. Kano and his colleagues hypothesized that customer satisfaction falls into five categories, and that some product qualities matter more to customers than others, and some don’t matter at all in determining overall satisfaction.
In the Kano model, attractive quality is above and beyond what a customer reasonably expects from a product to be satisfied with, like a temperature gauge on the side of a canned beverage. A one-dimensional quality is one that makes a customer happy when they’re happy and dissatisfied when they’re not, like a package that claims to have 25 percent more content. An indispensable quality must be present to give satisfaction, such as fresh or non-rotten food and drink. An indifferent quality does not affect customer satisfaction and an inverse quality is one that turns some customers off when it is present.
The Kano model is used by manufacturers and companies to evaluate product design and performance. Companies could design customer surveys of their products based on the Kano model to find out which product qualities influence purchasing decisions and satisfaction the most, and which qualities do not. The results of such surveys could be used to change the design of existing products and influence the design of future products.
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