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Kano analysis: the kano model explained.

21 min read Kano analysis is a tool that helps you enhance your product and service based on customer emotions. What is Kano analysis and how do you use it? Read our ultimate guide to the Kano analysis model.

Everyone gets excited when it comes to creating and developing new products. From ideation to project management, everyone on the team has ideas and wants to make things happen.

However, as good as the enthusiasm is, what almost inevitably happens is that teams end up with too many features to consider and, subsequently, you have no idea where to start.

You start questioning which features will be game-changers and which will be disappointing financial drains.

You may also have doubts about the usability of certain features and whether or not they provide value to your customers. To top it off, the time and cost for getting the feature upgrades wrong could set you and your team back months.

This is where kano analysis comes in. In this ultimate guide, we look at how you can use kano analysis to enhance your products and services, the process, and give you best practice support.

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What is kano analysis?

The Kano Analysis model (pronounced “Kah-no”), also known as the “Customer Delight vs. Implementation Investment” approach, is an analysis tool that enables you to understand how customer emotional responses to products or features can be measured and explored.

Using a Kano model questionnaire (used to conduct customer-focussed research), product features are categorized across two-axis scales: satisfaction and functionality. With this, businesses can prioritize features on a product roadmap based on how likely they are to satisfy customers and the implementation investment.

This is a much more strategic, customer-oriented approach to product development.

The origins of Kano analysis: Dr. Noriaki Kano

The kano analysis model was published by Dr. Noriaki Kano, professor of quality management at the Tokyo University of Science, in 1984.

At the time, complaint processing and enhancing popular features was the accepted way of improving customer loyalty. Kano wanted to see if there were other ways for brands to maintain and improve customer loyalty levels.

He believed that customer loyalty depended on emotional response levels to features. He hypothesized that there were five emotional response types to features , and conducted a study with 900 participants to explore his theory. With his results, he created the kano reaction graph (below ), which visualizes the five emotional responses as curves.

With this reaction graph, he was able to prove that customer satisfaction depends on how sophisticated an available function is, which in turn causes a more emotional response.

Kano’s Five Emotional Response Types

  • Must-be (or must have) features

Performance features

Attractive features, indifferent features, reverse features, why would you use kano analysis.

Kano analysis is very useful for product teams that want to answer these key questions:

  • How can we measure customer satisfaction ?
  • What features can we create to increase customer satisfaction?
  • Do our current features cause high customer satisfaction?
  • How can we enhance our features so that customer satisfaction is at the optimal level (‘delight customers’)?

By focusing on these questions and addressing customer needs, product teams can identify what it takes for their product to enter, remain, and excel in a target market.

When would you use kano analysis?

Wondering when to use the kano model? Here’s when it would be most effective and useful for your business:

  • When there is a limited time

When product teams are working to tight deadlines, the kano model is a great tool to speed up decision-making.

  • When there are limited resources

The simple method for carrying out Kano analysis uses an email questionnaire, meaning that you don’t need expert resources to do the research.

  • When you want to see what would impress your customers

When you’re looking to ‘think outside of the box or ‘think big, you can use kano analysis to see what features customers would like and find useful.

  • When you want to enhance a current product

When it’s time to refresh the product or keep it competitive against your market competition, using Kano analysis will assess all your feature options and give you clear choices to pick.

Benefits and advantages of kano analysis

Some key benefits of using the kano model are:

  • Save time and money

The kano model prevents wasted time and resources associated with developing features that don’t appeal to target customers.

  • Identify priority areas

The kano model identifies the priority areas for your current product’s features that need immediate attention to rectify under-performance.

  • Group your best features

The kano model prioritizes your feature ideas into a clear development plan based on performance enhancement and customer satisfaction levels.

  • Increase customer satisfaction

The kano model avoids feature development on ideas that won’t enhance customer satisfaction so that you can please your customers quicker.

Disadvantages and weaknesses of kano analysis

On the other hand, the disadvantages of using this tool should be considered as well:

  • Predominantly quantitative

Results provided by the questionnaire tend to provide quantitative (numerical) results, which can’t explore the ‘why’ behind the data. Further research to delve deeper into results may therefore be needed.

  • Requires analysis

Results from the questionnaire still need to be analyzed and require some knowledge to interpret and apply findings.

  • Can be hard to manage

Manual methods of administering surveys can be hard to manage — they take time and are difficult to compare. A good technology solution would do this work for you and integrate it with your systems.

How does Kano analysis work?

Kano confirms that a product’s customer loyalty level is defined by the customer’s emotional responses to its features. But the functionality of the product isn’t the only factor that makes it ‘good’ – emotions matter too.

In general, products can work well and fulfill the basic need it’s required for (e.g. a customer can use it to complete a task, such as using a car’s key to start its engine), but that may not be enough.

A product that works and fulfills its purpose can still be boring or ‘behind the curve’. For example, a car that has self-driving functionality is more impressive, goes beyond the basic needs, and makes a customer think ‘wow’.

Taking this approach, product teams can quickly increase their customers’ satisfaction level by launching a few great, new features, rather than lots of basic ones. The kano model helps you to prioritize which of these ideas are most valuable, so you can make effective business decisions on which to move forward with.

Satisfaction and functionality in the kano analysis model categories

To understand how the kano reaction graph works, it’s important to understand satisfaction and functionality. The two below appear within the model as measurement scales to understand the customer’s response to a feature.

Kano created a satisfaction scale to run from ‘Delighted’ (indicating high satisfaction or excitement) to ‘Frustrated’ (indicating low or no satisfaction).

customer satisfaction scale

In addition, Kano created a functionality scale (also known as the  Investment, Sophistication, or Implementation scale) that runs from ‘None’ to ‘Best’. This represents what level of function the customer thinks a feature provides. Has the feature been implemented to the highest level? Is this feature emotionally well-received by the customer?

product functionality scale

Based on responses from the kano questionnaire, features can be plotted on the kano reaction graph based on its satisfaction and function level:

graph representing importance of product functionality and customer satisfaction

The Five Categories of Features in kano analysis

Now that we know the scales of measurement for each feature, next is the feature categories.

There are five categories of features that represent five potential customer reactions to a feature

kano requirements type definitions: a summary

Must-be features

  • Associated with the Threshold Attribute line on the Kano graph
  • Must-be are basic features that customers expect a product or service to have.
  • These are considered basic features that are expected to be part of the product or service by default. E.g. A customer expects that their hotel room will be clean and have a comfortable bed.
  • If these features are there, the customer is likely to be neutral about them. Having these features won’t likely add more satisfaction.
  • The absence of these qualities will cause dissatisfaction.
  • Associated to the Performance Attribute line on the Kano graph
  • Performance features are desired features that customers want to have to add to their enjoyment of the product or feature, e.g. A car that has a large gas storage tank is considered to store more gas at one time, meaning it performs better than a car that has a smaller gas storage tank.
  • If there are a lot of performance features, then customer satisfaction increases in response. Kano described performance features as ‘ one-directional , as they increase the satisfaction and functionality upwards.
  • Associated to the Excitement Attribute line on the Kano graph
  • Attractive features are features that cause excitement or delight customers, which sets your product or service above your competition, e.g. Getting a free second product as part of purchasing the first product is not expected but is a delightfully attractive offer that the customer can’t get from other competitors.
  • Attractive features give satisfaction when they are there, but they don’t cause dissatisfaction when they aren’t there as they aren’t expected to be part of the product in the first place.
  • Associated to the Indifferent Attribute line on the Kano graph
  • Indifferent features are features that customers think are neither good nor bad. They can be unimportant features to the customer, e.g. The font-face type used on a product’s logo
  • Indifferent features don’t create satisfaction or dissatisfaction. They’re features that are hardly noticed and don’t make a difference to the customer.
  • Not associated with any lines on the Kano graph, but has the power to impact satisfaction levels.
  • Reverse features are features that can cause dissatisfaction and can be considered undesired features by some people, e.g. The visual formatting in an instruction manual can cause dissatisfaction with customers that prefer a step-by-step text instruction format.

A product team should include more must-be, performance, and attractive features and try to avoid indifferent and reverse features.

Perceptions change over time

All features will shift and change over time:

  • Customer expectations of a product can change over time as more competitive products may enter the market

Product industry leader, Daniel Zacarias calls this occurrence “the natural decay of delight.” Delight levels increase as products have more exciting features year on year, like Apple phones.

  • Customer needs can change according to the environment they’re in

For example, with business becoming more remote following the COVID-19 pandemic, hotel rooms increasingly needed to come with free WiFi as a basic feature (when in the past it would be seen as an attractive feature).

  • Attitudes may change

What was seen as an indifferent feature in the past, like the amount of plastic used in sandwich wrapping, becomes more important as interest in recycling grows. The indifferent feature can become a reverse feature, actually putting off customers from buying the product.

Therefore, it’s important to remember to update your feature insights regularly and consider your customer’s environment.

Kano analysis tutorial

Kano analysis uses a standardized questionnaire to help customers feedback about their responses to features. It offers a way to measure opinions in a quantifiable way.

kano analysis example

In the questionnaire, list each feature separately. You can even aid understanding of that feature by providing context or a demonstration of the feature.

For each feature, two sets of questions are asked:

  • How do you feel if you have this feature?
  • How would you feel if there was more of…?

(requesting a response based on a positive, or functional, situation)

  • How do you feel if you do not have this feature?
  • How would you feel if there was less of…?

(requesting a response based on a negative, or dysfunctional, situation)

The answers are chosen from this range of responses:

  • I expect it
  • I am neutral
  • I can tolerate it
  • I dislike it

Evaluating the responses from the kano model questionnaire

Based on the responses, you can figure out which of the five Kano feature categories closely aligns with each feature investigated. You do this by looking at the combination of answers to see how they score against this marking table:

kano model questionnaire

Site Source: Sapioresearch.com

You can even add in a third question, which was an additional measure about how important a feature is (suggested by John Hauser of MIT, to help prioritize the order of important results).

Ask how important it is for the product/service to have a specific feature, and provide a Likert scale for responses. For example,

self-stated importance scale

In general, the results from the kano model questionnaire will provide you with:

  • A sense of how your features are perceived in terms of usefulness and functionality.
  • How urgently these features are needed

How to apply kano analysis results to your business

There are several ways you can apply kano analysis to your business to improve customer satisfaction levels:

Improve your products and services

You could start off using kano analysis with this simple five-step method:

  • Gather feature ideas: Collect existing feature ideas or create ideas for features that you think you would like to implement in your products or services.
  • Conduct a kano model survey assessment for each: Use our tutorial section to get started.
  • Apply the Kano feature categories to each feature in question: Using your customer results and your judgment, take each feature and classify these according to the five categories of must be, performance, attractive, indifferent and reverse.
  • Position the features on the kano graph to see what features would work best, and where there are quick wins.
  • For example, increase the number of excitement attributes while removing or softening the reverse features so they aren’t as offensive to different customer tastes. It’s good practice to get the basic features implemented and then focus on the ‘must be’ features to encourage competitiveness.

Persona traits emerge from kano results

Once you have the information about categories for each feature, you could align the likes and dislikes from the questionnaire to your marketing personas.

If there is overlap with the attitudes towards certain features (e.g. features that encourage recycling) and personas (e.g. a young demographic that is environmentally conscious), then you can update marketing messages to these groups and sell your features as benefits.

These features will likely be seen as attractive to aligned audiences, leading to you having a better chance of selling more products and services.

Benefit vs cost modeling

As you’ll have a prioritized list of features at the end of the five-step method, you could follow up your planning with a benefit and cost model for each feature.

This could help understand which features, if implemented, could create a high return on investment by increasing sales.

Knowing this will help inform your product development cycle, especially if time and money resources are short.

Using in conjunction with NPS or customer reviews or feedback

Net Promoter Score is a metric used in customer experience programs. NPS measures the loyalty of customers to a company. NPS scores are measured with a single-question survey and reported with a number from -100 to +100, and a higher score is desirable.

By creating positive features and increasing the customer’s satisfaction level towards a product or service, you can help your marketers to impact the overall NPS.

Best practice advice and tips for Kano analysis

  • Choose the right features: It’s advisable to test up to 20 features with the kano model. More will make the questionnaire too long.
  • Choose the right customers: Choose a sample size that is representative of your customer segmentation , your market segmentation, and your target marketing personas. Don’t forget about diversity as well! Approximately 15-20 is a good size to go ahead with, as there will be a lot of data coming back to analyze.
  • Get the best data: Ensure you get the best responses by making sure your questions are clear. Give the draft questionnaire to another team member for a fresh pair of eyes on it.
  • Consider follow-on qualitative interviews : Alongside the kano model questionnaire, try to get the ‘why’ and context behind the responses with qualitative interviews.

Analyze your data: How Qualtrics can help you understand your kano analysis results

The kano model helps you to identify unspoken needs before prioritization. A product or service is more than just its functionality; it’s about customer emotions and responses.

How can Qualtrics help you carry out the kano model?

The Qualtrics survey platform can help product teams and marketers discover your customer emotions from kano analysis surveys and other methods:

  • Understand your customer results in minutes, with strong data analysis and dashboard features that group your feature categories automatically.
  • With your insights on customer responses, you can update other surveys for NPS or do further research, all from one place.
  • Get alerts and act faster when your customers are not satisfied by connecting all the internal team processes, and sharing the kano analysis results immediately with teams.
  • Repeat the questionnaire easily over time and see when your feature categories change over time and by which customer groups.
  • Add in contextual information from around the business, accessible through one single platform, to help you make decisions on prioritization faster.

Why choose Qualtrics software tools?

Using our sophisticated survey software tool, you can get answers to your questions quickly. We’ve also designed the solution to be easy to use for all levels of users, using intuitive drag-and-drop tools and pre-built survey templates .

We’re trusted by 11,000+ businesses and institutions worldwide, including over 80% of the Fortune 100 to help:

  • Reach respondents wherever they are with surveys on mobile devices, apps, websites, chatbots, and many more
  • Create and test surveys in real-time and collaborate effortlessly
  • Uncover new insights with predictive intelligence and powerful statistical analysis built-in
  • Launch your survey with confidence and improve survey quality with ExpertReview -Powered by iQ
  • Integrate your surveys into your existing systems like Zendesk , Marketo , Adobe , and many more

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KANO Analysis: The Complete Guide

Appinio Research · 20.10.2022 · 9min read

Smiley faces on building blocks

Creating products or services that will satisfy your customers' needs is the ultimate goal for any team. While numerous ideas may be available, it's important to prioritize the development of product/service features in a customer-centric way.

This involves answering two key questions:

  • What features are necessary for my product/service?
  • Which features contribute to the "wow" effect?

To effectively answer these questions, it's crucial to understand which features differentiate your product from those of your competitors, and not just basing it on gut instinct!

And this is exactly what the Kano methodology can help to accomplish.

In this article, we'll explore why and how to use the Kano method, using a simple example to illustrate its effectiveness.

What exactly is the KANO method?

Developed by Japanese Professor Noriaki Kano of the Tokyo University of Science in 1984, the KANO methodology recognizes that a product or service is more than just functionality.

Not every added feature has the same effect on customer satisfaction.

In order to evaluate features and properties, they are classified into five categories based on their effect on customer satisfaction:

Basic features (Musts) They are always expected by customers and cause strong dissatisfaction if absent. However, customer satisfaction cannot be increased by their presence. An example is the telephone function of a smartphone.

Performance features (One-dimensional) They have a linear relationship with customer satisfaction. The less pronounced they are, the less satisfied consumers are. They must match customer expectations and be of the same quality as those of competitor products. An example is the resolution of a smartphone's camera.

Attractive features (Attractive) These are not expected by customers but are well-received if present.

The absence of these features does not negatively affect customer satisfaction. They are used to differentiate from the competition. An example is a free case delivered with a smartphone.

Neutral / indifferent features (Irrelevant)

These do not add value for customers and do not affect satisfaction when present or absent. An example is the number of ringtones on a smartphone.

Reversed features (Reversed)

They are unwanted features that decrease customer satisfaction when present.

An example is the permanent tracking of a smartphone

The following chart of the Kano model of customer satisfaction illustrates the effect of the different categories on customer satisfaction when implemented or not.

Kano model of customer satisfaction

However, assigning a feature to a category is not always clear-cut.

Different customer groups derive different benefits from different features, and the perceived benefit may differ depending on the target group. Therefore, a separate Kano analysis is necessary for different target groups.

Additionally, the evaluation of product features must consider time. Features that were exciting a few years ago may now be expected basic functions that are taken for granted by the target group.

More questions about the KANO method? Talk to our experts.

How does the KANO method work (with Appinio) - A Step-by-Step Guide

Conducting a survey based on the KANO method is a simple and efficient process. Each feature is analyzed by asking a functional question and a dysfunctional question, each with the same answer options:

  • Functional question: What do you think about product X/service X having feature Y?
  • Dysfunctional question: What do you think about product X/service X not having function Y/function Y not having?

But conducting a KANO analysis with Appinio couldn't be easier.

Step 1: Get the survey ready

  • Register for free on the Appinio platform.
  • Browse among the example studies and templates, Define the features and the scenario you would like to test with or without their help.

Think you need extra help? Our experts are here for you, book a demo.

Step 2: Send your survey live

  • Our research consultants will do a final check before your survey goes live.
  • See the answers coming in! Our panel responds as soon as the survey is live.

Step 3: Analyze your data

Go to the Appinio interactive dashboard and start analyzing the data you collected.

The results of the KANO survey are automatically calculated and visualised in two ways:

With a categorisation of the factors in tabular form ("discrete analysis") , and

In the form of a s catter diagram to take fine trends into account ("continuous analysis").

Accordingly, the results can be used immediately for decision-making.

Use the filter functions to understand how different groups perceive the features you tested.

Export your results to Excel, PPT or CSV at any time.

KANO model continuous analysis

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Kano method?

As many other methods, the KANO analysis has advantages and disadvantages.

  • The Kano method offers an efficient and straightforward way to identify customers' needs and desires, whether in the digital or non-digital space.
  • It can be applied at any stage of a product's life cycle, making it a versatile tool to evaluate and prioritize product features.
  • The Kano method helps to simplify the evaluation of product-market fit by allowing companies to set the right priorities early in the product's life cycle.
  • For product managers, the Kano analysis is a helpful tool to create a product roadmap that aligns with customer needs.
  • It is particularly useful in evaluating new product ideas, potential improvements, and determining how certain product features differentiate from the competition.

Disadvantages

  • One of the main drawbacks of the Kano method is that potential features must be known beforehand. This requires various analyses of the market and customers, such as competitor analysis and customer interviews, to determine potential features.
  • If many features are to be tested, surveys may become lengthy and tiring for the respondents. Therefore, careful consideration of the number and complexity of features included in the survey is necessary.

In conclusion, the Kano method is a powerful tool for identifying customers' needs and desires, evaluating and prioritizing product features, and creating a roadmap for a product.

Its versatility allows it to be applied to any stage of a product's life cycle, and its benefits are especially helpful for product managers seeking to improve their products' market fit.

However, it is important to note that the Kano method is not suitable for generating new ideas for potential features, but rather for evaluating them once they have been identified through other means such as market and customer analysis.

Overall, the Kano method is a valuable addition to any market research toolkit and can lead to more informed and effective decision-making. 

KANO Analysis explained

What are the key features of the KANO model?

What are the advantages of the the KANO approach?

What are the needs addressed by the KANO model?

What are the quality elements of the KANO model?

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KANO model: What it is, Importance, Uses & How It Works

According to the Kano model, a product's characteristics are given priority while it is being manufactured. Learn more.

Let’s examine the Kano model, its background, the characteristics that make it effective, and the instances in which it may be used in this article.

Together, the teams for marketing and products examine the data gathered in the form of models called priority frameworks. There are several models that organizations have adopted. The Kano model is one such example.

What is The KANO model?

The Kano Model, pronounced “Kah-no,” is a method for quality management in prioritizing features on a product roadmap based on how likely they are to please customers, as customers expect specific necessities to be met. To assess if adding a highly-rated item to the roadmap is a wise strategic move, product teams might compare its implementation costs with its use costs, considering how customers react.

The Kano model may give a detailed grasp of a customer’s demands as it delves into the intricacies of customer preferences. The voice of the customer table may be used to translate and modify the generated verbatims, recognizing that customers have distinct reactions to various features. Quality function deployment (QFD) House of Quality effectively utilizes this valuable input as a resource, ensuring customer expectations’ structured and effective fulfillment.

Specifically, the model has two dimensions:

  • Achievement (the horizontal axis) ranges from the provider not doing it at all to the supplier performing it well.
  • Satisfaction (the vertical axis) ranges from complete unhappiness with the product or service to complete satisfaction with the product or service.

Importance of KANO Model

The Kano Model holds significant importance in product development, marketing, and customer satisfaction management for several reasons:

  • Customer-Centric Approach: The Kano Model places the customer at the center of decision-making, helping organizations understand and satisfy customers’ basic expectations, desires, and expectations more comprehensively. This approach enables them to tailor their offerings and conduct Kano analysis to prioritize features effectively.
  • Product Innovation: It encourages organizations to think beyond basic requirements and develop features that can satisfy customers and, in some cases, even delight them, thus driving product innovation.
  • Customer Retention: Meeting or exceeding expectations, particularly in the attractive and one-dimensional categories identified through Kano analysis, can enhance customer loyalty and reduce churn rates.
  • Customer Segmentation: The Kano Model can assist in segmenting customers based on their preferences, allowing for targeted marketing and customized product offerings to satisfy diverse customer groups.
  • Risk Mitigation: By identifying potential sources of customer dissatisfaction, including reverse needs through Kano analysis, the Kano Model helps mitigate the risk of product or service failures and negative customer experiences.
  • Strategic Planning: It informs long-term strategic planning by aligning organizational objectives with customer expectations and market trends, aiming to satisfy customers and remain competitive.

The Kano Model is a valuable tool that empowers businesses to understand, prioritize, and meet customer needs effectively, leading to improved customer satisfaction, increased competitiveness, and sustained business success.

When to Use KANO Model

The Kano Model can be beneficial in various contexts and stages of product development, marketing, and satisfaction analysis. Here are some specific situations when you should consider using the Kano Model:

define kano analysis

Product Development:

When you are in the early stages of designing a new product or service, use the Kano Model to understand which features to prioritize and how they will impact satisfaction.

Feature Prioritization:

When you need to prioritize features or attributes within an existing product or service, the Kano Model can help you determine which ones will significantly enhance customer satisfaction.

Customer Feedback Analysis:

If analyzing customer feedback or survey results, the Kano Model can help you categorize and prioritize customer comments and suggestions based on the five feature categories.

Competitive Analysis:

When you compare your product or service to competitors, the Kano Model can uncover opportunities for gaining a competitive edge by emphasizing appealing or overlooked features.

Quality Control:

When monitoring product quality and customer satisfaction, the Kano Model can help ensure that you consistently meet basic needs and avoid unintentionally introducing reverse needs.

Companies can apply the versatile Kano Model at various stages of product development and marketing strategy to gain insights into customer preferences, prioritize features, and drive customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Features of KANO Model with Examples

The Kano Model effectively categorizes features or attributes of a product or service into five distinct categories, considering their impact on customer satisfaction and how customers perceive them. Here are the five categories of the Kano Model, along with examples for each:

1.Must-Be Features (Basic Needs):

These are fundamental features that customers expect as a minimum requirement. Their absence leads to dissatisfaction, but their presence doesn’t necessarily increase satisfaction because customers take them for granted.

  • Example: In a smartphone, must-be features include the ability to make calls, send text messages, and access the internet. Customers expect these functions to work reliably.

2.Performance Features (One-Dimensional):

These features or performance attributes have a direct and linear relationship with customer satisfaction. The better these features are, the more satisfied customers will be, and vice versa.

  • Example: In a car, performance features encompass fuel efficiency, horsepower, and safety features. Customers compare and choose cars based on these factors.

3.Attractive Features (Excitement Needs):

These features, when present, unexpectedly delight customers, although their absence only occasionally leads to dissatisfaction.

  • Example: In a hotel, an attractive feature might be a complimentary spa treatment or a personalized welcome gift for guests. These features can create a positive emotional response.

4.Indifferent Features (Indifferent Needs):

These are features that have little to no impact on customer satisfaction. Customers are generally neutral about them, and their presence or absence doesn’t significantly affect overall satisfaction.

  • Example: In a restaurant, the color of the server’s uniform may be an indifferent feature. Most customers have a low preference for it.

5.Reverse Features (Reverse Needs):

These are features that, when present, can lead to customer dissatisfaction. These features may be counterproductive and should be avoided or carefully managed.

  • Example: Excessive pop-up advertisements interrupting the user experience in a software application can be a reverse feature. Customers find them annoying and might even uninstall the software.

It’s crucial to recognize that the classification of features can evolve, with what was once seen as an attractive feature becoming a must-be feature as customer expectations change. Therefore, continuous customer feedback and market research are essential for effectively applying the Kano Model in product development and customer satisfaction management.

How The KANO Model Works

It’s time to discuss what it means to utilize the Kano model with numerous users and features now that we know how it works.

This section is based on several stories of practitioners and researchers using the Kano model, who have shared their experiences and key takeaways at each stage of the process:

  • Selecting attributes and users for analysis;
  • Obtaining the best information from clients;
  • Analyze the outcomes.

Selecting Attributes and Users for Analysis

The first thing to consider is the breadth of your investigation regarding features and users.

Choosing Features

Choose features that provide substantial benefits to the user. Your backlog may comprise technical debt payment, a sales/marketing item, a reporting system, or a design refresh. Kano doesn’t cover these.

Although products are more significant, we can gauge customer contentment through external factors. Research conducted using Kano will be detrimental to your team, customers, and yourself if you need numbers to defend against not complying with a request from an internal stakeholder.

If you’re using volunteer participants, restrict the number of characteristics in your survey. It should boost participation and focus.

Selecting Customers

You must consider some demographic, logical cohort, or persona to which the consumers (or prospects) you choose to participate in your survey belong. If not, your data will probably be dispersed widely.

Your client or prospect base probably needs to be uniform, and neither will their opinions on your feature. But you may significantly lower the noise in your research if you consider a category to which they belong.

Obtaining The Best Information from Clients

The sole approach you used to contribute to the Kano research was the questionnaire and how you presented it. Therefore, make sure that this phase is as successful as possible.

Clarify Questions

It would help if you asked straightforward, concise questions. Each should represent one trait. If the feature is complicated, break the query down.

Your inquiries should focus on user advantages rather than product capabilities. How could you automatically enhance your photo?

Avoid polar question pairings. The dysfunctional question isn’t the Reverse of the functional one; it lacks functionality.

Instead of describing features, demonstrate them.

Better than asking direct questions is showing the consumer the functionality and how they feel about it.

Instead of a written query, you may offer a prototype, interactive wireframes, or mockups. The consumer may better grasp what’s being suggested with this visual and dynamic “explanation.”

If you inquire this way, ask for conventional answers after the user interacts with the feature prototype, like a detailed text query. It will help them remember your survey’s elements without confusing them.

Pay Attention to Phrases and Comprehension.

Some individuals are puzzled by Kano’s response order. “I like it that way” seems gentler than “It must be that way.”

The responses are ordered from pleasure to displeasure avoidance. Alternative word choices include:

  • I like it that way.
  • It will be a fundamental requirement.
  • I’m unbiased.
  • I don’t like it, but I can deal with it.
  • I dislike it and cannot tolerate it.

You need to be cautious of how these alternatives are perceived and ensure respondents grasp the purpose of the questionnaire. Selecting the best responses and conveying them to participants should improve outcomes.

Ask The Customer About The Feature’s Significance.

Multiple teams have recommended adding additional questions following the functional/dysfunctional pair. Customers are asked how significant a feature is.

This information helps differentiate features and determine which are most important to customers. It lets you distinguish between primary and minor characteristics and how they affect consumer choices.

Examine Your Questionnaire.

Review the questionnaire with a few of your team members before distributing it to your clients. Speaking with individuals from the outside would undoubtedly cause any internal uncertainty, if there is any.

Analyze The Outcomes

Now, you reach the study’s motivation. After tabulating and analyzing data, you may classify characteristics and prioritize them. You may explore two types of analysis: – discrete and continuous . Both are mathematical notions that link participant answers to the Kano categories. Each method depends on the sort of insight you want.

Discrete Analysis

The most straightforward approach to analyzing the Kano results is to:

  • Sort respondents based on the demographic and persona traits that best describe them.
  • Using the Evaluation table, classify each respondent’s responses.
  • Add all the replies for each category characteristic (and demographic).
  • The most common answer (i.e., the mode) will be for each feature’s category.
  • Use the leftmost wins rule when there are close outcomes among categories: Must-have > Performance > Beautiful > Uninteresting.
  • If you asked respondents to rate the significance of certain features, you should average their responses if you did.

This kind of analysis provides you with a basic level of knowledge. It is helpful when a more thorough approach is unnecessary (e.g., testing design ideas or making a rough draft of your roadmap).

Continuous Analysis

The discrete analysis has a few problems, but it’s a fantastic place to start and gives a general understanding of the outcomes. Namely:

  • In this process, we lose a lot of information. The first step was to assign each respondent’s 25 possible answers to one of six groups. The responses from each responder are then combined into a single category for each characteristic.
  • The variation in data is entirely unknown; softer answers are given the same weight as tougher ones. Consider an attractive person with a dysfunctional “expect it” vs. a “live with it” attitude.

Score Answers

First, each response choice is given a potential satisfaction value between -2 and 4. The higher the number, the more the client wants the function. Importance is graded 1 to 9 like previously.

Functional: -2 (Dislike), -1 (Live with), 0, 2 (Must-be), 4 (Like);

Dysfunctional: -2 (Like), -1 (Must be), 0 (Neutral), 2 (Live With), 4 (Dislike);

Importance: -1 (Not Important), 9 (Extremely Important).

You may find the Dysfunctional scale backward. Don’t higher scores reflect more pleasure? In Dysfunctional responses, Disliking denotes strongly disagreeing with the feature’s absence. Inclusion would increase satisfaction. Hence, it receives a higher score.

The rationale for the asymmetrical scale (beginning at -2 instead of -4) is that the categories you obtain from negative replies (Reverse and Questionable) are weaker (Must-be and Performance).

These scores will categorize the characteristics of a 2-D plane. With this strategy, no evaluation table is needed.

Suppose a characteristic turns out to be Reverse. In that case, you may always define it as the opposite and swap the Functional and Dysfunctional scores to classify it into a different Kano category; alternatively, you can remove it from your research.

The KANO model is a structured prioritization methodology for product teams, aiding them in effectively prioritizing features believed to satisfy and delight clients, leading to high satisfaction and customer delight.

These approaches demonstrate their effectiveness in this challenging marketplace, where products compete for limited shelf space and consumers’ attention. Even before the product development phase, the Kano quality model strives to clarify the investment in features, time frame, and resources needed.

The KANO model case study demonstrated how to launch a new product successfully while working under limited resources and tight timing constraints.

You can rapidly assess customer sentiment with QuestionPro, which enables you to examine trends in client comments. Paying attention to, analyzing, and acting upon customer input ensures high satisfaction and creates the best customer experience. Now, give it a try!

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define kano analysis

The Kano Analysis: Customer Needs Are Ever Changing

Updated: May 12, 2023 by J. DeLayne Stroud

define kano analysis

I will be the first to admit that I still have a few cases of 8-track tapes. For those too young to know what 8-track tapes are, please ask your parents. As a customer who purchased a lot of music, my needs were simple. I wanted clearer sound and something smaller to store. The music industry responded and introduced the cassette. The cassette was indeed smaller. It did not fade out and then back in with that annoying “click” that my 8-track tapes used to have. I was pleased with my cassette collection. Then suddenly, the music industry introduced something called a CD – a compact disc. The CD offered better clarity, more storage capacity and the ability to jump to specific songs, or shuffle the order of their play. Best of all, one never had to rewind!

The point is simple. As a customer, my needs changed. In the move to CDs, I did not realize my needs had changed but the music industry, through research, keeping up with the competition and advances in technology, delighted me with new product offerings. Even today as my CDs are dust covered because I only use Spotify, new advances in music technology are being made to further address music customer needs.

The Kano Analysis

How does a company analyze customer needs ? How can it easily determine what delights customers or what their basic needs are? One powerful technique to address these questions has been developed by Professor Noriaki Kano of Tokyo Rika University, and his colleagues. This is Kano’s theory: For some customer requirements, customer satisfaction is proportional to the extent to which the product or service is fully functional.

The Kano model addresses the three types of requirements:

  • Satisfying basic needs: Allows a company to get into the market.
  • Satisfying performance needs: Allows a company to remain in the market.
  • Satisfying excitement needs: Allows a company to excel, to be world class.

Dissatisfiers or Basic Needs – Expected features or characteristics of a product or service (legible forms, correctly spelled name, basic functionality). These needs are typically “unspoken.” If these needs are not fulfilled, the customer will be extremely dissatisfied. An example of an “unspoken” need when staying at a hotel is cleanliness. This includes a clean bathroom, clean linens and a pleasant, fresh aroma in the air. When a person books a reservation at a hotel, they do not request a clean room. They expect it. If this basic need is not met, they will be extremely dissatisfied.

Satisfiers or Performance Needs – Standard characteristics that increase or decrease satisfaction by their degree (cost/price, ease of use, speed). These needs are typically “spoken.” Using the hotel example again, “spoken” needs could be Internet access, a room away from the elevators, a non-smoking room, the corporate rate, etc.

Delighters or Excitement Needs – Unexpected features or characteristics that impress customers and earn the company “extra credit.” These needs also are typically “unspoken.” Think of the Doubletree Hotels. Those who stay there are delighted by a freshly baked, chocolate chip cookie delivered to their room during turn-down service.

Customer Needs Change

The horizontal axis of this figure indicates how fully functional a product/service is. The vertical axis indicates how satisfied the customer is. The line going through the origin at 45 degrees, represents the situation in which customer satisfaction is directly proportional to how fully functional the product/service is. In other words, it represents the situation in which the customer is more satisfied with a more fully functional product/service and less satisfied with a less functional product/service.

Kano terms such requirements as “one-dimensional” requirements. A 10 percent improvement in functionality results in a 10 percent improvement in customer satisfaction. For example, the faster the response time on a system, or the more miles per gallon for a vehicle, the more the customer likes it.

Conclusion: What Delights Today…

Here is the Kano analysis in summary:

  • The Kano analysis helps to identify unspoken needs before prioritization.
  • It is intended to help prioritize customer needs.
  • It should be linked to a company’s multi-generational project plan.
  • Generation 1 has to cover the “must be’s.”
  • The company must realize that customers’ expectations and/or needs vary over time.

Needs change. For example, in the Doubletree Hotel example about the freshly baked, chocolate chip cookie: Many people are becoming more health conscious now. Perhaps a high-calorie, confectionary item is no longer a top delighter. Also, consider the comment about the need for Internet access in the hotel room being a satisfier. While wireless Internet access began as a delighter, it is now a basic need of convenience.

The 2 important points to keep in mind are:

1) What delighted customers in the past is now expected.

2) What is expected today will not meet minimum customer expectations in the future.

About the Author

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J. DeLayne Stroud

business analyst mentor

Introduction to Kano Model | Tips and Guidance

kano model

One of the greatest challenges in the process of product development is determining which features will have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction and significantly contribute to the product’s success on the market. 

With contributions and ideas from many different sides, including the development team, internal stakeholders, marketing department, and others, the backlog of proposed features may often seem endless and quite overwhelming. 

A lot of these product features will prove to be very useful and even potential game changers. However, others will just needlessly drain the financial resources and cause everyone involved in the process to waste valuable time.

Opens in a new tab.

The earlier this is done in the development process the better. Of course, making these decisions is not easy, as you certainly can’t rely on gut feeling to determine the value of certain features to the customer. 

This is where the kano model comes in, as an extremely helpful tool to guide you through the process of deciding which product features are meaningful and bring value to the end users and which are just an unnecessary burden on the entire development process.

Table of Contents

What is kano model.

The foundation of the kano model is the assumption that the value of a product feature goes beyond its mere functionality; it also has to account for the customer’s emotions. This model provides us with means to understand how to measure and explore the user’s emotional response to a certain product feature.

To analyse customer needs, the kano model diagrams them across two axes: 

  • The vertical axis shows the level of satisfaction the customers have in relation to the product and its features. The high satisfaction is at the top of the axis, while the extremely low level of user satisfaction is at the bottom. 
  • The horizontal axis indicates the product performance, or to what level it fulfils these expectations. High-performing products are to the right, while low performance is on the left-hand side. Depending on the product or its feature placement along these axes, the customer will be dissatisfied, indifferent, or delighted.

kano model

What is the Main Objective of the Kano Model?

The main objective of the kano model is to enhance the productivity and quality of the development process by providing all the data and information needed to define priorities in the product life cycle. The analysis conducted through the kano model involves a standardised questionnaire through which customers can deliver feedback on how satisfied they are with the current features and express potential additional needs relating to the product. 

The information acquired this way provides product teams with a much better understanding of the customer and helps them properly assess the viability and desirability of a potential new feature against the cost of developing it.

What are the 3 Needs Addressed by the Kano Model?

When developing the kano model, Dr. Noriaki Kano identified the three basic levels of customer needs: expected, normal and exciting. Understanding these three levels of needs is crucial for defining what will it take for a product or feature to have a positive impact on user expectations and optimising the development process to answer these expectations.

Expected Needs

The expected needs refer to entry-level customer expectations. These are the non-negotiable qualities, attributes, and properties that every product must have to even be present in the market. The features that satisfy the needs at this level are those that customers usually take for granted and expect to be present in any case, such as tires and steering wheel on a car.

Normal Needs

Normal needs are one step above the expected needs, and addressing those expectations should allow the product to keep its place in the market. The features that answer these needs are not the ones the customers take for granted, but rather the ones they would specify if asked, as though they were choosing from the list. 

Following up on the car example, these needs would be, for example, a sunroof or leather seats. It’s not uncommon that, over time, features that address those needs become an inherent quality of the product and regress to the expected need level. For example, electrically-operated car windows were once reserved only for certain models, but today, they’re something a customer expects in every car.

Exciting Needs

The exciting needs are the highest level of customer expectations and features that address them should have, as Dr. Kano specified, “wow” qualities and attributes. They should come as a surprise for the customer and broaden their horizon of what they thought was possible. 

Products with features that address exciting needs are usually the ones that stand out among the competition and force competitors to incorporate those features in their products to survive. Often, these features will create a whole new category of product, previously unseen in the market.

What are the Key Categories of Features in the Kano Model?

Based on customer preferences and expectations, the kano analysis model classifies product features into five categories, assigning each of them a value depending on the user response. These values are closely related to the customer needs described above and will determine the product’s performance on the kano model diagram, and, therefore, the level of customer satisfaction. Not all of these feature qualities are desired in a product. Two of them bring negative value and should be avoided if possible.

Must-Have Features

The must-have or assumed features are those that meet the most basic customer expectations and they should be incorporated into every product of a certain type. They are crucial for the product’s basic function, so if they’re not present, the result will be the dissatisfaction of customers and likely failure of the product. 

On the other hand, as they are the expected part of the product, these features won’t particularly delight customers or contribute to a higher level of satisfaction. Therefore, these features should certainly be high on the list of priorities if the product is to avoid customer dissatisfaction.

Performance Features

Next on the list of priorities are the performance or one-dimensional features. They are a part of the already existing customer expectations and their advantages are commonly obvious to an average user, but increased investment in these features will result in higher customer satisfaction. 

Although not game changers, they can often deliver a slight edge over competitors. In many cases, this category of features will be one of the primary factors for customers when deciding which product to purchase or how much money to spend.

Attractive Features

Attractive features, also known as exciters or delighters, go beyond customer expectations and their immediate and basic needs. As they’re unexpected, they elicit joy and delight when present and lead to full customer satisfaction. However, their absence doesn’t impact the basic functionality of the product and, therefore, won’t result in dissatisfaction. 

Attractive features are often the key to gaining an edge on the market and making the product stand out among the competing releases. It should also be noted that, over time, as their novelty wears off and they become a part of customer expectations, these features can become a performance or even must-have feature. Cameras on mobile phones are a perfect example of this.

Indifferent Features

Indifferent features are the first of the two categories that are better to avoid. Customers feel neutral about these features and they don’t bring any significant difference to their response to the products. Simply said, customers don’t care if these features are present or not. So, as they don’t deliver any meaningful value, they just add extra risk and drain resources that could probably be better used somewhere else.

Reverse Features

The issue with reverse features is that they not only don’t add to customer satisfaction, but their presence actively contributes to dissatisfaction. Or, to put it differently, their absence will lead to higher satisfaction. Reverse features are often the reason why customers will choose not to purchase a product and turn to the alternatives offered by the competition. If a product team determines that a certain feature has a reverse value, then, it’s a clear sign that it should be dropped altogether.

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Jerry continues to maintain the site to help aspiring and junior business analysts and taps into the network of experienced professionals to accelerate the professional development of all business analysts. He is a Principal Business Analyst who has over twenty years experience gained in a range of client sizes and sectors including investment banking, retail banking, retail, telecoms and public sector. Jerry has mentored and coached business analyst throughout his career. He is a member of British Computer Society (MBCS), International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Business Agility Institute, Project Management Institute (PMI), Disciplined Agile Consortium and Business Architecture Guild. He has contributed and is acknowledged in the book: Choose Your WoW - A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimising Your Way of Working (WoW).

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What is a Kano Model

The Kano model is a framework designed to prioritize features based on the degree to which they will satisfy the users. In other words, a Kano model helps prioritize features based on how much the feature will aid the users.

In most cases, you will use the Kano Model after you receive customer feedback (VOC)–often implemented along with QFD during the Define phase of DMAIC of a Six Sigma project.

Noriaki Kano first introduced the Kano model in Japan in 1984. After carefully researching customer loyalty and satisfaction, he developed the model to focus on these customer factors.

Kano Model

What are the key elements that make the Kano Model effective?

The Kano model analyzes customer needs by diagramming user wants across two axes.

The vertical axis shows satisfaction with your output. The top of the vertical axis represents high satisfaction, and the bottom represents very low user satisfaction.

Similarly, the horizontal axis represents how the goals are achieved or shows the performance of the service. Low performance sits on the left-hand side, and high performance can be found on the right-hand side.

Kano Model

Your clients can be considered delighted, neutral, or dissatisfied, depending on how you perform on each axis.

When Would You Use a Kano Model?

The Kano model can be used in the manufacturing or service industry whenever the product development team prioritizes the features with limited resources and time.

  • Identify performance features
  • Include basic requirements
  • Delight the customer by introducing unexpected features
  • When you have limited resources and time
  • Avoid unwanted features

5 Categories of Kano Model

3 features to include.

Dissatisfiers: The dissatisfier feature is also called “must be” or the expected basic feature. These are the basic requirements that customer expects as part of a product or service. If these features existed in the product or service, customers would not be happy, but at the same time, if these are not present, then the customer will be disappointed.

Kano Model

Example: When a customer switches on the fan in a hotel room. If it works, the customer won’t even think about it. But if it is not working, then he will be disappointed.

Performance: The performance feature is also called a one-dimensional and desired quality feature. These increase customer satisfaction with the investment. In other words, more of the performance feature will increase customer happiness.

define kano analysis

Example: Customer satisfaction will increase in proportion if you serve more variety (with quality) in the hotel’s free breakfast.

Delighters: A delighter is a feature, also called latent requirements, that is not basic and expected but desirable and unexpected. Customers will not be unhappy if they are missing. Particularly, a feature like this goes beyond the consumer’s immediate needs. What is considered a delighter today may be a requirement tomorrow. Cameras on cell phones are a feature that was a delighter at one point but now is a basic requirement.

Kano Model

Example: Customers will be delighted if you provide a free room upgrade or give out complimentary toys or bags to the kids at the hotel.

2 Features to avoid

Indifferent: This includes when a customer is indifferent to whether the feature exists or not. In other words, the customer doesn’t care about whether they are present or absent. These unnecessarily add to cost and risk.

define kano analysis

Example: Costly glass flowers placed in the hotel parking lot.

Reverse: The presence of a feature that dissatisfies the customer. In other words, enhance customer satisfaction with the absence of this feature.

define kano analysis

Example: Customers becoming irritated with colored LED lights placed on the hotel grounds.

How could you use a Kano model to influence future strategy?

The quick evaluation of technology and change in customer needs force businesses to predict the requirements upfront and adapt to their operation. In fact, all customer needs are not equal; they have different priorities and attach different meanings to these needs. So, it is the responsibility of the business to understand and predict future requirements.

The Kano Model helps to predict the feature requirements of the customers. The performance feature may be undesired in the future, and also the delighter may become the basic requirement.

Example : CD/DVD drive in a laptop is a delighter feature at one time, which becomes a basic requirement over time. Since customers are expecting slim laptops, nowadays, new generation laptops won’t have the CD/DVD drive in laptops as it becomes an undesired feature.

How to Build a Kano Model

The following is a five-step process to build a Kano Model

Step 1: Identify the F eatures that need to implement: Create a list of features that have to add to the product or service. In fact, these requirements come from customers, management, or the points from the team brainstorming.

Step 2: Conduct a customer survey: Get customers’ opinions on each feature in a standardized way using two questions. The questions would be functional questions and dysfunctional questions.

  • Functional question: Ask a question about how the customer would feel if the product or service had that particular feature.
  • Dysfunctional question: Ask a question about how the customer would feel if the product or service did not have that particular feature.

define kano analysis

Step 3: Categorize the response : Review the customer response to functional questions and dysfunctional questions for each feature. Compare the functional and dysfunctional to assess the type of requirement.

Kano Model

  • Q-Questionable
  • I- Indifferent
  • P-Performance
  • D-Delighters

Example: Suppose you are asking the customer about a drop-down feature in the reports to select the suppliers, and the customer responds “Expect” for functional and “Dislike” for dysfunctional, then it would be a “Must be “feature.

Step 4: Analyze the data : Summarize all the responses and analyze the highest requirement for each category.

Step 5: Prioritize the F eatures to implement :

  • First, focus on “must be” requirements that customers expect to have. Otherwise, they will be disappointed in their absence.
  • Then focus on performance requirements and try to include as many as you can. More performance features increase customer satisfaction.
  • Now focus on delighter features to include based on the budget.
  • Eliminate any reverse features.
  • Finally, ignore all indifferent features as they don’t add any value.

Example of a Kano Model in a DMAIC Project

Example: XYZ is a famous corporate hospital performing the Kano model to prioritize various features based on the degree to which they will satisfy or delight the users.

Step 1: Identify the features that need to implement :

The team listed below five features to add to hospital service to enhance customer satisfaction

  • Introduce an online billing system to reduce waiting time.
  • Collect insurance process charges from customers during admission for quick processing.
  • Introduce two free follow-up visits whose bill is more than 20K.
  • Install sensor lighting system for power saving.
  • Increase the number of varieties in the patient menu.

Step 2 : Conduct customer survey:

Hospital management collected feedback on each feature from 30 patients standardized using two questions, like functional questions and dysfunctional questions.

Step 3: Categorize the response :

The hospital reviewed the customer response to functional questions and dysfunctional questions for each feature.

define kano analysis

Step 4: Analyze the data :

Summarized all the responses received from 30 patients and analyzed the highest requirement in each category.

define kano analysis

Step 5: Prioritize the features to implement :

  • First, focus on “must be” requirements: Feature 1 and Feature 5 – It reduces the billing time and serves good food.
  • Then focus on performance requirements: Feature 5 – Customer satisfaction will increase with the number of varieties.
  • Now focus on delighter features: Feature 3- Customers delighted with free follow-up visits.
  • Eliminate any reverse features: Feature 2: Although it will reduce the processing time, customers are not ready to pay the processing charges during admission.
  • Finally, ignore all indifferent features as they don’t add any value: Feature 4- Sensor-based lighting system does not matter to the customers.

Helpful Kano Model Videos

Comments (6)

Interesting

Thanks, Sarah.

Great explanation! thank you Ted! Had not seen the dysfunctional perspective.

Hi am looking to enroll 12 of my Employees for Green belt six sigma program, The program is tailored to creat six sigma methodology awareness in my Organization, I would like to have your details and mode of training as well as the cost and resources to be used. I look forward to your response.

Thanks Vince Ottih Quality Manager(LV) Unimacts Global LLC Las Vegas, Nevada U.S.A

I’ll follow up with you over email, Vince. Thanks for reaching out.

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Article • 8 min read

Kano Model Analysis

Delivering products that will delight.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

define kano analysis

Imagine the scene: your innovation team is excited about next year's product upgrades. The ideas have been flowing and your people have come up with lots of new features for your firm's best-selling product.

But, as project leader, you have some doubts. The cost of all the extra features will be considerable, and it will be very tough to deliver the finished product on budget and on time.

This is where a tool like the Kano Model can be useful. It's a simple and versatile technique for deciding which features a product or service should have, based on how much they will satisfy the customer.

In this article, we look at the origins and details of the Kano Model, and explore a five-step guide for using it to help you to develop a product or service that will delight your customers – without bankrupting your business!

What is Kano Model Analysis?

The Kano Model of product development and customer satisfaction was published in 1984 by Dr Noriaki Kano, professor of quality management at the Tokyo University of Science. [1]

Kano says that a product or service is about much more than just functionality. It is also about customers' emotions. For example, all customers who buy a new car expect it to stop when they hit the brakes, but many will be delighted by its voice-activated parking-assist system.

Adding one particularly attractive feature like this could delight customers and increase sales without costing significantly more. On the other hand, constantly introducing new features to a product can be expensive and may just add to its complexity without boosting customer satisfaction.

The model therefore encourages you to think about how your products relate to your customers' needs, while moving from a "more is always better" approach to product development to a "less is more" approach.

How Does the Kano Model Work?

The model assigns three types of attribute (or property) to products and services:

1. Threshold Attributes (Basics). These are the basic features that customers expect a product or service to have.

For example, when you book into a hotel, you'd expect hot water and a bed with clean linen as an absolute minimum.

2. Performance Attributes (Satisfiers). These elements are not absolutely necessary, but they increase a customer's enjoyment of the product or service.

Returning to our example, you'd be pleased to discover that your hotel room had free superfast broadband and an HD TV, when you'd normally expect to find paid-for wi-fi and a standard TV.

3. Excitement Attributes (Delighters). These are the surprise elements that can really boost your product's competitive edge . They are the features that customers don't even know they want, but are delighted with when they find them.

In your hotel room, that might be finding the complimentary Belgian chocolates that the evening turn-down service has left on the bed.

Figure 1, below, illustrates how the presence (or absence) of each of the three attributes in a product or service can affect customer satisfaction .

Figure 1 – The Kano Model

define kano analysis

Diagram reproduced with permission from the Japanese Society for Quality Control. Original reference: ''Noriaki KANO, Nobuhiko SERAKU, Fumio TAKAHASHI, and Shin-ichi TSUJI Attractive Quality and Must-Be Quality, Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 147-156, 1984."

You can see that, if a product's features don't meet a customer's Threshold Attributes, his or her satisfaction levels will be very low. However, even if you fully deliver on these, you won't impress customers that much.

Most products compete on Performance Attributes, where a customer weighs up one product against another and judges satisfaction by the availability of various features.

But she may discover an Excitement Attribute that really appeals to her, and gives her high satisfaction, even if it isn't perfectly implemented.

Figure 2, below, shows how customers' reactions to certain features (or the lack of them) can also have a negative or zero effect on satisfaction levels.

Figure 2 – A Development of the Kano Model

define kano analysis

In the bottom right quadrant, you can see that a product with just Threshold Attributes, even if it has a number of them, may not even lead to an indifferent level of customer satisfaction.

Customers begin to find your product attractive when you offer Performance Attributes, and it's along this line, in the top right quadrant, that most organizations position their products in the market.

Excitement Attributes are the "wow factor" features that can give you a competitive advantage . These features can represent a good return on investment , because you don't need many of them to generate high levels of customer satisfaction.

It's important to consider the nature of your business, and the pace of change in your industry: today's Excitement Attribute can very quickly become tomorrow's Threshold Attribute!

For example, touch-screen technology in smartphones and tablets was an Excitement Attribute when it was introduced by Apple in 2007, but it soon became a Threshold Attribute common to many electronic devices.

How to Use the Kano Model

Before you apply Kano Model Analysis, be sure to find out what your customers really value. Never assume that you know! Ask them what they like, what they love, and what they dislike.

Our article on market research can help you with this process. Approaching your customers directly, using surveys or focus groups , for example, is also useful for keeping track of their changing expectations.

Make sure that, when you choose customers to give you feedback, you pick those who are typical of the market that you want to sell in.

Then, follow these five steps:

  • Research and brainstorm all of the possible features and attributes of your product or service, and everything you can do to please your customers.
  • Classify these as Threshold, Performance or Excitement Attributes and add a fourth type, Not Relevant. These are the things that don't add value because customers don't care about them.
  • Make sure that your product or service has all of the essential Threshold Attributes. If necessary, eliminate some Performance Attributes so that you can include these features.
  • Assess the Excitement Attributes, and think about how you can incorporate some of them into your product or service. Again, if necessary, cut some Performance Attributes, so that you can afford to invest in your Excitement Attribute.
  • Choose the Performance Attributes that you can deliver at a competitive price, while still maintaining an acceptable profit margin.

Involve your customers in each of the five steps, above. That way, you get their insights all the way through the process.

The Kano Model of product development and customer satisfaction was published in Japan in 1984 by Noriaki Kano, Tokyo University of Science's professor of quality management.

The model assigns three attributes to products and services:

  • Threshold Attributes. These are the basics that customers expect.
  • Performance Attributes. These increase a customer's enjoyment but aren't essential. Some of these may need to be scaled back, so that you can deliver Threshold and Excitement Attributes.
  • Excitement Attributes. These are the surprise elements of a product or service that delight customers.

Understanding your customers' experiences and expectations, and effectively generating innovative ideas for improving your product or service, are key to carrying out Kano Model Analysis successfully.

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Mapping Customer Expectations through Kano Analysis

Kano Analysis

  • 5 MINUTES READ

Also known as Kano Modelling and Kano Mapping.

Customer needs and expectations are dynamic and keep changing over time. This requires companies to revise and assess these needs from time to time to adapt to the changing environment. The Kano analysis is a valuable tool that is used to identify and categorize customer needs based on their preferences, comments, and reviews. The results of the analysis can then be considered when evaluating potential opportunities for improvement.

Kano analysis is frequently used to capture the voice of the customer in order to categorize and prioritize all forms of customer feedback, which can be collected simply through interviews and standardized questionnaires . This analytical model allows to understand how product or service features impact customer satisfaction. This provides an in-depth insight into the dynamics of customer preferences and allows to be able to respond more objectively.

Basically, the Kano model classifies product and service features into three primary groups: “must-be,” “performance,” and “delight” features. Additionally, two other groups, “indifferent” and “reverse” features, can be considered during the analysis. These five feature groups are based on what customers say is important and how they value products and services.

Kano Analysis Categories

The Five Groups of Features

The must-be features – These are the basic requirements and the reasonable level of quality as determined by the customer. If these requirements are not present or are insufficient, customers will be dissatisfied. These features are rarely mentioned when discussing with customer their needs. Examples: A defect-free product, timely and responsive customer service, the windshield of a car, and the operating system in a PC.

define kano analysis

The performance features (satisfiers) – These features result in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. The better the performance, the more customers are satisfied. Companies often use these features to prioritize their improvement initiatives. Examples – The reduced amount of spoilage in a production line, and the speed of answering a phone in a call center.

define kano analysis

The delight features – Organizations should aim for giving customers more than what they expect. These are the features that distinguish your product or service. They are often unexpected, unspoken, and provided to customers for no additional money. Examples: Getting a free mouse when purchasing a laptop, and having your car washed after being serviced.

define kano analysis

The indifferent features – These are the features that their presence or absence do not affect the satisfaction level of customers. Examples: Some utility applications in your smartphone or computer.

define kano analysis

The reverse features – These are the features that bring dissatisfaction if they are present. Examples: Asking too many questions in an interview or adding too many extra features may results in dissatisfaction to the majority of customers.

define kano analysis

The results of collecting the voice of the customer information and categorizing customer feedback can be presented in a Kano diagram . This diagram has two axes, a vertical axis which represents customer satisfaction, and a horizontal axis which represents feature presence or the degree of feature implementation. Product and service features can then be plotted on the appropriate group of the Kano model.

Kano Diagram

Encourage customer participation in the Kano mapping process whenever possible. In cases where direct customer interaction is not possible, consider employing methods such as direct observation of customers to identify their priorities. If direct engagement with customers is unattainable, collaborate with individuals who have regular customer interactions, such as sales professionals and customer service representatives, to generate insights and inputs.

Conducting a Kano Analysis

The following steps explain how to conduct a Kano analysis exercise:

  • With your team, define the purpose of the Kano analysis.
  • Brainstorm all possible product or service features.
  • Brainstorm everything that can be done to delight customers.
  • Classify the collected features into the Kano groups. Get customers to do the classification where possible.
  • Think of ways to improve customer satisfaction and retention (ensure your have the basic features, ensure you provide the best possible performance , and ensure you are delighting your customers from time to time).
  • Agree on the actions you need to take to improve the current situation.

Conducting a Kano Analysis

To illustrate how the Kano model works, think about studying customer satisfaction in an airline’s economy class. First, brainstorm all possible service features and classified them into the three main Kano groups, as illustrated in the example below.

Kano Analysis Example

Then, include customer satisfaction data obtained from past surveys or alternative reliable data sources, as illustrated below.

Kano Analysis Example

The same information has been presented graphically in a Kano diagram, utilizing numerical values from the satisfaction data.

Kano Analysis Example

Kano analysis can be helpful to show how customer needs are constantly changing as time goes on. The features that are considered delighters today are the must-be of tomorrow.

define kano analysis

Wrapping Up

In summary, Kano Analysis is a valuable tool for understanding and categorizing customer needs and expectations. It helps organizations adapt to changing customer preferences, ultimately improving customer satisfaction. Kano diagrams are used to categorize and visualize customer feedback, helping organizations better understand customer preferences and prioritize improvements to products or services.

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What is the Kano Model?

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The Kano Model, developed and published by Dr. Noriaki Kano, is an analytical approach to identifying unspoken customer needs and preferences before setting development priorities on the product roadmap .

Instead of building new features or entirely new products based solely on internal ideation sessions (which can become echo chambers), the Kano Model offers a qualitative framework for vetting product development plans based on customer feedback, satisfaction, previously unexpressed desires, and customers’ purchasing appetite.

Many organizations still overemphasize quantitative data, which leaves an information gap in the product management function. The Kano Model’s rigorous qualitative process neatly fills this gap by providing a mechanism for product teams to answer these critical questions:

  • How can customer satisfaction be reliably measured?
  • Will customer loyalty increase by upgrading existing features vs. building new ones?
  • How can we know which new features will wow and delight our customers?

What is the main objective of the Kano Model

The Kano Model emerged while Dr. Kano was a professor of quality management at the Tokyo University of Science, during the rise of Japan’s Total Quality Management method (TQM) - a comprehensive management approach aimed at enhancing quality and productivity.

The core of his theory is that customer loyalty is largely driven by a customer’s emotional response to product features. If those emotional responses can be measured and analyzed, product teams gain access to more nuanced user persona attributes and buying motivations, which can then be used to inform product upgrades and new product development.

Kano's analysis uses a standardized questionnaire that guides customers to provide feedback on their level of satisfaction with current features and to articulate additional needs. This data provides multiple layers of insight for product teams who need to weigh the desirability of a new feature against the investment required to deliver it.

What are the elements of the Kano Model?

Dr. Kano articulated three levels of customer needs – expected, normal and exciting. Understanding these needs, and how to optimize for them, is vital for any product team tasked with increasing customer satisfaction.

1. Expected levels of need

Expected needs are the non-negotiables that the product must have. Consumers take these features for granted; they assume they’ll be there in every case.

A Kano Model example of expected needs: tires and brakes on a car.

2. Normal levels of need

Normal needs go one step further. Continuing our car example, these might be items that most car dealerships treat as an add-on, such as leather seats or a sunroof.

Over time, features that provide a normal level of need often become so ingrained in the product that they regress to the level of an expected need.

3. Exciting levels of need

Exciting needs bring the “wow” factor. These features are a delightful surprise that widens the customer’s perception of what’s possible. These attributes sometimes define a new category (many Apple product launches have done this) or set the company so far ahead that the competition has no choice but to incorporate this new feature in order to stay relevant.

Categories of the Kano Method

The Kano Model template also assigns features a value based on each of the five emotional response types - Must-Have, Performance, Attractive, Indifferent, and Reverse.

Must-Have - As the name suggests, Must-Have features are quite literally a must-have. These are the features that meet the customer’s most basic functional expectations. Even if a product ranks high in all other categories, if this Must-Have ranking is low, a product will likely struggle to achieve consistently high customer satisfaction and subsequently, user retention.

Performance - Once the Must-Have features are accounted for, the next priority is Performance features. The functional advantage of these features is often obvious to the average user, and almost always correlates to an uptick in customer satisfaction. Returning to our earlier car example, a car’s gas mileage would be a Performance feature - the more the customer has of this attribute, the more pleased they are.

Attractive - These are unexpected features that cause a positive reaction. Also called Exciters or Delighters, Attractive features often transition into Performance features over time, as their novelty wears off. For example, there was a time when keyless entry was only available on certain cars, making it an Attractive feature. However, as it has become more ubiquitous, this feature would now be more commonly categorized as a Performance feature, or even a Must-Have for some consumer segments.

Indifferent - These features don’t make a substantial difference in a customer’s reaction to the product. The customer feels neutral about them. During Kano analysis, many product teams have been taken aback to discover that features they invested in heavily were not as cherished by the product’s user base as expected. Despite the initial sting of this feedback, these are necessary and actionable insights that every product team should be seeking.

Reverse - These features increase customer satisfaction by being absent. Features that have been assigned a high Reverse value clearly tell the product management team: “Do not build this!”

How is the Kano Model implemented?

The best time to implement the Kano Model’s categories of product development is when your product team is experiencing one or more of the following scenarios:

  • Internal teams aren’t aligned on which priority features to develop next
  • The product team is working on a product type for the first time
  • Tight deadlines with limited margin for error
  • Limited budgets that don’t have enough padding for the full development of a feature that hasn’t been pre-vetted for high customer demand

The process begins with compiling a list of all potential new features. Next, all feature ideas are assessed using two factors:

  • The likelihood that this feature will produce high customer satisfaction.
  • The total resource investment required to implement the feature.

This approach is most effective for teams in need of guidance to figure out which minimum-threshold features they absolutely must build, which performance features to start investing in now, and which customer-delight features will deliver the biggest customer “Wow!” for the buck.

In short, the Kano Model helps teams get clear on which baseline features are necessary, which performance features they can start roadmapping for future deployment, and which “Wow!” features will generate the highest degree of customer retention and new customer acquisition.

To learn more about research methodologies, read our eBook: https://roadmunk.com/product-prioritization-ebook

With your research in hand, choose the roadmap best suited to your needs here: https://roadmunk.com/product-roadmap-tools-comparison

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Who created the Kano Model?

How does the kano model work, when should teams use the kano model, how to run a kano survey, how to design a kano survey, analyze and evaluate the responses, .css-uphcpb{position:absolute;left:0;top:-87px;} what is the kano model, definition of the kano model.

The Kano Model is a framework for identifying the most important features when creating a product, based on the level of satisfaction they’re expected to bring to users.

The Kano Model involves organizing customer preferences across five groups, and helping teams to view products from the users’ point of view.

Mastering Prioritization

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The Kano Model incorporates basic and advanced product features . By using the Kano Model, teams can create products that not only fulfill users’ needs but provide lasting value over time. 

This, in turn, can mark the difference between an okay product with moderate sales, and a truly exceptional product that leads a market.

The Kano Model was first created by Professor Noriaki Kano in 1984. He was a professor at the Tokyo University of Science, specializing in quality management. 

Professor Kano was inspired to develop the model when conducting research into the range of factors determining how products satisfy customers and keep them loyal. 

Essentially, Professor Kano created a framework by measuring features via their ability to satisfy or delight users. Responses to both measures will align with one of Professor Kano’s five prioritization categories.  

Product teams employing the Kano Model in the development of a new product, or the upgrading of an existing one, organize features into the following five categories:

Features falling into this group are those that customers expect across all products of its type. They’re essential for the product’s basic function, and while they’re not particularly likely to delight users, satisfaction levels could drop significantly if said features were missing from a product’s design. 

Performance/Satisfiers

These features demonstrate a product team’s commitment to greater functionality versus the basic suite. They add to the overall experience and can help one product gain a slight competitive edge over another, though it’s unlikely to be a deal-breaker. 

Excitement/delighters

Features in this category can make a significant difference to a customer’s purchase decision and a user’s satisfaction. Excitement attributes/delighters have the power to give a product a greater edge and stand out from rival releases. 

Download Now: Get our eBook on Mastering Prioritization

They can encourage a user to become, and stay, loyal to a brand over a number of years, even as subsequent products’ quality may decrease. ‘Delighters’ can turn users into brand advocates and encourage them to share positive feedback online, driving new customers to try the product. 

Indifferent attributes

Any feature considered ‘indifferent’ makes neither an explicitly positive or negative impact on users. They may struggle to decide whether the feature’s presence increases or decreases their satisfaction levels. 

Reverse attributes

Features within this category actively dissatisfy users and should be left out of the product altogether. They can cause users to become frustrated by a product and even consider alternatives if there are enough of them present. 

Placing features into any of these categories allows product teams to determine which are the most important in a product’s development — and which can be dropped altogether. 

But it shouldn’t come down to the product team’s opinion alone.

Product teams should also gather data from user research. They might compose a survey tailored to each of the features utilized in a product, and invite users within the target demographic(s) to share their thoughts on the features’ function. 

Teams can demonstrate the features in a number of ways. An interactive wireframe or a more sophisticated prototype may be viable, though it’s crucial to avoid spending too much time on any demo model. The key goal is to convey the feature’s function and how it helps users achieve their goals. 

The surveys should identify how helpful users find each feature and how would they feel if it were left in or out of the final product. It’s vital that participants fall within the target audience only, to ensure the most accurate, valuable feedback. 

Standard responses included in Kano Model surveys ascertain whether a user ‘liked’ a feature, ‘expected’ it, feels ‘neutral’, ‘tolerates’ it, or ‘dislikes’ it. Product teams can analyze the variety of responses and determine which features are most likely to satisfy customers when bringing the product to market. 

Theoretically, product teams can utilize the Kano Model when developing any product.

However, it tends to prove most beneficial to those teams working to tight deadlines and with limited resources. There’s no time to waste in such scenarios: every hour and every dollar matters. Investing either into features that will end up dissatisfying users, or even chasing them away to a competitor, is a huge waste. 

The Kano Model can also be a fantastic help for teams working on a certain type of product for the first time or those with little experience overall.

Designed to provide valuable guidance, highlighting which features must be included in the build and why the Kano Model helps prioritization feel like a natural process.

Finally, the Kano Model can benefit teams looking to release an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to the market as soon as possible. They can continue their research and add other satisfiers or delighters down the line.

An essential step in completing a kano diagram is conducting a kano survey.

This survey is designed to collect the responses and information you need to plot your kano diagram accurately. 

That means this is going to be a survey of your customers . You'll use this survey to gauge their practical and emotional needs, then factor in how those relate to features and how they're prioritized during development. 

Fortunately, a kano survey is pretty straightforward. It resembles a typical questionnaire, and there are even templates for you to choose from online. 

To design your kano survey, you need to start by listing every feature you're considering including in your product.

This way, you can analyze how important each of these features is to your users, ranging from non-essential to must-haves. 

Once you've listed each of these features, you'll want to add two sets of questions for each feature. These questions should be based on the following questions:

How will you feel if you have this feature?

How would you feel if there was more of this feature?

Second set:

How will you feel if you did not have this feature?

How would you feel if there were less of this feature?

To keep things straightforward (and quantifiable), you'll want to give your respondents a set of potential answers. These should look like this:

I expect it

I am neutral

I can tolerate it

I dislike it

Once you have the responses to your kano survey in hand, you're ready to start analyzing and evaluating them. And since you used the pre-selected answers above, it should be easy to assign each one a value and then plot the responses on your kano diagram. Download now: Get our 5-minute guide on How to use the Kano Model

What Is the Kano Model?

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What is the Kano model?

How is kano used in product development, pro 1: you have limited time and resources, pro 2: you want to find your customer’s “aha moment”, pro 3: you need to define the features of your mvp, con 1: you have a long list of features to prioritize, con 2: you don’t know exactly how the customers use the product, con 3: you need a stable stream of data, the pm’s hot take, the kano model explained (with examples).

The Kano Model Explained (with examples)

Wondering “What is the Kano model?” On top of that, are you considering using the Kano model in product development?

In this article, we’ll answer all the pressing questions and more. Hopefully, by the end, you’ll know exactly if the Kano model fits your product development processes and whether it would be a good addition to your day-to-day job as a product manager.

The Kano model is a product development analysis tool that helps you understand customer preferences and the perceived value of your product’s features.

It categorizes customer preferences into five groups:

  • Must-have features: If you don’t have them in your product, the customer will be highly dissatisfied. At the same time, the customer takes those features for granted so they won’t contribute to their satisfaction level.
  • One-dimensional features: Your customers compare those features when deciding between you and your competition. These features are directly proportional to customer satisfaction. The more of them you have, the more satisfied your customer becomes.
  • Reverse features: The opposite of one-dimensional features. These features annoy your customers. The more of them you include, the higher the dissatisfaction gets.
  • Attractive features: Your customers don’t expect those features, but if you include them in your product, they can lead to exponential satisfaction growth. On the other hand, their absence won’t negatively affect customer satisfaction.
  • Indifferent features: Your customers don’t care about those features. Not having them doesn’t cause dissatisfaction either.

Say you’re a product manager of an absence management app, trying to choose between building a Slack integration or an internal chat for the users. You don’t have the budget and time to handle both of them next quarter (and you don’t know if it makes sense at all).

The Kano model will help you prioritize features based on their potential impact on customer satisfaction and, ultimately, the return on investment in the product’s growth.

You now understand the theory – let us show you how to apply the Kano model in practice:

Implementing the Kano model should consist of five steps:

  • Select the features to consider
  • Survey your customers
  • Categorize answers
  • Collate your data
  • Prioritize the features

Here is how to tackle each one:

  • Select the features to consider 🗒️

A crucial part of this step is gathering all the planned features in one place. This should involve not only your backlog but also places like:

  • Customer support chats
  • Customer calls
  • Slack channels
  • Real-life conversations

This clear overview will allow you to organize the process and not miss out on any critical insights not captured in your project management software.

  • Survey your customers 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Once you have identified all the to-be-done features, you need to ask your customers how they feel about them in a standardized way.

The Kano model proposes a pair of questions you should include for each feature in your surveys:

  • The functional question: Ask your customers how they’d feel if a specific feature was present in your product. 
  • The dysfunctional question: Ask your customers how they’d feel if a specific feature was missing from your product.

Your customer should answer each pair of questions on a linear scale with five possible choices:

  • I expect it
  • I am neutral
  • I can tolerate it
  • I dislike it

For example, using the Kano model to plan your absence management app, you should ask your customer two questions:

  • How would you feel if the product allowed you to send absence notices via Slack?
  • How would you feel if the product didn’t allow you to send absence notices via Slack?

This can help you organize your customers’ opinions and evaluate them. Here’s how to do it:

  • Categorize the answers 📊

Once you get both responses from the customer, you should evaluate them using the Kano Evaluation Table:

define kano analysis

You take the customer’s answer to your functional and dysfunctional questions and reference the table to determine the feature’s category. As detailed earlier, the category is signified by the first letter of its name:

  • “M” for “Must-have features”
  • “A” for “Attractive features”
  • “P” for “Performance features”
  • “R” for “Reverse features”
  • “I” for “Indifferent features”

For example, if your customers answered that they “like” being able to send absence notices via Slack and they’d “tolerate” if they didn’t have this feature, you categorize this feature as “attractive.”

You might’ve noticed another category we haven’t covered: questionable features. These features don’t belong to any categories as your customer gave conflicting answers to the questions about them.

If your customer said they’d like the Slack integration to be both present and absent from the app, you can’t draw any logical conclusions. This is when the feature becomes “questionable.”

  • Collate the data and prioritize your work 🏷️

Here, you gather each feature’s category count and compare them.

Say you plan to implement five features in your absence management app next quarter. You surveyed ten customers about them and gathered their opinions. Your data might look like this:

You can see that 7/10 customers described the ability to send absence notices via Slack as a “delighter.” On the other hand, you can see that 8/10 people are indifferent to the chat functionality inside your app.

This allows you to prioritize the features and organize the upcoming tasks. Here are the best prioritization practices for the Kano model:

  • Start with the must-haves: Your customers expect to see these, so you must deliver them as soon as possible.
  • Include as many performance features as possible: Your customers are looking for those features when comparing your app to the competitors.
  • Add attractive features: Include a few attractive features that answer a clear customer pain point and help them reach the “Aha! Moment” faster.
  • Remove any reverse features (if you have any).
  • Ignore indifferent features.

Should I use Kano in my work?

You know how the Kano model works and how to implement it. The question is: should you do it? Here are three use cases for and against Kano:

The Kano model is relatively straightforward and can quickly provide clear guidance on prioritizing the right features to work on.

The model is repeatable, too, allowing you to conduct continuous research, spot market trends, and monitor changing expectations about your product.

For example, for your absence management app, the Slack integration may have become so widespread among your competition that it turns into a performance feature, not an attractive one. You can use this knowledge and adjust your product roadmap accordingly.

The Kano model allows you to quickly spot the Jobs to be done for your product and tell you which features communicate them best. It can help you prioritize the features that help your customers reach the “Aha! Moment” faster.

Returning to our previous example, say the survey highlighted that your users appreciate the consolidation of absence data from various departments. 

Using this insight, you can rearrange the tasks in the pipeline to prioritize features that enhance data visualization. More precise and organized data may improve the user experience, leading to more positive reviews and a higher NPS score. 

The Kano model informs you about your users’ sentiment towards certain features. During the MVP development, this information can help you eliminate all the features your customers can live without, clarifying the core functionality your app should have.

Say you and your team wonder if you should include the sign-up with a Google/Microsoft account in your MVP. The Kano model will quickly reveal how your users feel about this feature or its absence and remove guesswork inside the team.

We saw when Kano could be useful - now let’s check a few situations when it might not be the wisest to deploy it. 

Because of how the Kano model is structured, you may find it difficult to interview your customers about a long list of features. They might feel overwhelmed having to respond to 60 questions (the functional and dysfunctional ones for each feature).

Scale down the number of features being tested to keep your Kano session focused and minimize the effort for your users.

The Kano model requires you to ask specific questions about real-life use cases of your product. If you don’t know how your customers use the product, coming up with relevant questions that give you enough information might be impossible.

Say the design team for your app asks about a made-up scenario that doesn’t reflect how your users actually use the product. This may confuse the users filling in the survey, leading to inconsistent (or entirely wrong) data.

Make sure to validate all the use scenarios with supplementary research. This will help you establish the as-is situation.

The Kano model isn’t about definitive numbers or stable research methodologies. It’s a quick, lean method for roadmap prioritization or identifying new feature opportunities that might give you an edge over the competition.

When you need more precise data about specific aspects of your product, you might consider using more accurate models, such as Conjoint Analysis, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), or the Voice of the Customer (VoC) framework.

Each model has unique advantages and can provide a more rigorous understanding of customer needs and preferences than the Kano model, which might be more suited for early-stage ideation and prioritization.

As unprecedented as it might be, we are bringing in several Fibery in-house voices for our verdict on the Kano model:

The reasoning behind the model makes sense and I think we all implicitly use it when prioritizing features. Would I use this as my primary prioritization method? Absolutely not. Anton Iokov, Head of Product
While I like Kano model simplicity, I failed to apply it cohesively for the large product. It still frames your thoughts about users needs in a good way, but it is not enough to make decisions about priorities and feature roadmaps. Michael Dubakov, CEO
I haven’t used this model before. I just watched people struggle with it :) productmonkey at Fibery
Kano has the advantage over a lot of other prioritization models in that it allows for identifying features that could have a negative impact. Most other methods assume that everything you work on will be beneficial (by a lot or a little). Chris Gibbs, Solution architect

The Kano model helps you go beyond features – it empowers you to prioritize the work on your product based on customers’ emotions, needs, and pain points. 

While using the Kano model, keep in mind that this model gives you immediate insights into your users’ sentiment towards specific features. Treat it as a vital signal that informs your strategy, but don’t rely on it in every aspect of your product development.

If you want to start using Kano immediately, check out Fibery’s guide for interviewing and surveying users with the Kano model. And, if you already have completed the first surveys and need a place to organize the work, sign up for a free Fibery trial and use our integrated Kano classification features.

Psst... Wanna try Fibery? 👀

Infinitely flexible work & knowledge hub.

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Designorate

Designorate

Design thinking, innovation, user experience and healthcare design

What is Kano Model Analysis? And How to Conduct it.

Designing a product can be challenging. The array of features and designs to select and eliminate is daunting, especially when stepping out into the field with customer satisfaction and delight in mind. There are endless questions and possibilities at the early stage of the  design thinking process . How will the product perform, or is this service a financial drain? Will customers respond well to this shiny new product? The Kano Model helps us to identify the answers to these questions.

While the design research and  design iteration  help us identify the consumer’s needs, we need a theoretical model to help us frame the questions we want to ask our consumers. Some companies already built a clear and accurate understanding of their clients and implemented their product development process through a design-driven culture inside their organisation. Think of Apple and  Airbnb . Other companies may have yet to develop this clear understanding. The Kano Model can help companies as a tool to build this understanding, which they can use especially in the  prototyping testing phase  of the product.

What is Kano Model Analysis?

The Kano model is a theory that focuses on customer satisfaction, relying on emotional responses to product quality and functionality. This model is simple but, more importantly, efficient and straightforward. It gains insight into how a customer responds to a service or product’s versatile features and attributes.

The Kano model analysis is a tool based on that theory that helps modify and enhance your products, focusing on servicing customer emotions during the product roadmap. This model was also known as “customer delight vs. implementation investment.” The essence of this tool is that a product is much more than just fulfilling its objective use. The basis of the Kano model analysis is the emotion between a customer’s response to various products and services (  Customer Journey Mapping: A Complete Guide for Designers ).

Who Developed the Kano Model Analysis?

Professor Noriaki Kano, Tokyo University of Science, coined the Kano Model. He taught quality management and published his theory in 1984. The Kano model was built on three core values:

  • A good-quality product will create loyalty between the customer and the company.
  • Innovation is key to remaining relevant.
  • Value for money is what keeps customers loyal.

Why would you Use Kano Analysis? 

The question should rather be, why wouldn’t you? As mentioned above, designing a product or service can be daunting. It is challenging to narrow out the features and attributes of a product to figure out how you would want to define it. Suppose you’re designing an electronic device. As far as features go, there are an array of options. This is where the Kano model comes in. You would want your product to stand independently and display unique features. The product needs to be successful and exciting, so how will you sort out all this clutter of information and create a meaningful product and experience for the customers?

This brings me to the Kano model. It will sort out your priorities and narrow down which product features are desired, which are basic, and what brings value to the customer (  Empathic Design: The Most Difficult Simple Approach to Successful Design  ).

When would you Use Kano Analysis?

This model can be most needed when there’s an array of features to wade through and insufficient clarity on the next step. The Kano model analysis assigns what features should be highlighted, keeping in mind the financial and time limitations of the tested feature. The Kano Model can be part of your research methods to get user satisfaction with existing product features. For new products, users can be used during the prototype testing phase during the  design thinking process . The Kano Analysis is linked to different methods that can help us to identify the current problems, such as the  5 Whys Root-Cause Analysis ., and the  Thematic Analysis  used to analyse user qualitative answers.

The Categories of Features in Kano Analysis

We’re going to delve deep into The Kano model categories, such as the questionnaire plus the satisfaction and functionality scale.

Kano’s Five Emotional Response Types

Noriaki Kano believed that customers had emotional responses to product or service features. He theorised these emotional responses by conducting a study on 900 participants to gather intel on this theory. Further on, he visualised the emotional response types.

  • Must-be (or must-have) features
  • Performance features
  • Attractive features

Indifferent features

Reverse features.

Although these emotional response types have been widely translated and studied, they have been given different names. They were called delighters/exciters, satisfiers, and dissatisfiers in English. The original thought dates back to Kano. They are also called:

  • Threshold attributes (basics)
  • Performance attributes (satisfiers) 
  • Excitement attributes (delighters)

Kano Model Dimensions

In addition, he also created a functionality scale, which was also called the investment, sophistication, or implementation scale. This scale’s purpose was to represent the functionality of a product or service based on what the customer thinks ( How to use Card Sorting to Improve Service Design ).

The Kano reaction graph scales the customer’s response to a feature, keeping customer satisfaction and product functionality in mind. This scale indicated satisfaction from the highest level to the lowest level of frustration. This is insightful input coming from a customer in response to a feature.

Kano Model Scale

Satisfaction and functionality Scales

This image represents the functionality scale (otherwise called the investment, sophistication, or implementation scale). The scale reads none all the way to best. The scale provides insight into the product’s functionality. Can the product offer more? Has it really been shaped up to its highest quality? The customer can now let us know the point. If we take into consideration the Kano questionnaire responses and truly create a product panned out by the customer, the features and attributes can be determined by its satisfaction and functionality level. Product teams can put the data to use to ensure that the product will create loyalty between customers and the company and garner a positive response.

This image represents the functionality scale (the investment, sophistication, or implementation scale). The scale reads none all the way to best. The scale provides insight into the product’s functionality. Can the product offer more? Has it been shaped up to its highest quality? The customer can now let us know the point. If we take into consideration the Kano questionnaire responses and truly create a product panned out by the customer, the features and attributes can be determined by its satisfaction and functionality level. Product teams can put the data to use to ensure that the product will create loyalty between customers and the company and garner a positive response. The Kano model analysis has three categories assigned to products and services:                                                                                          

Must-Be Attributes (Basics)

In reverence to the image, the above threshold attributes are basic expectations. The  minimum viable product  is expected or required to have by a customer. No customer would find themselves excited or surprised by this feature, such as a jacket requiring a zip and a clock with a hand.

If you step into a customer’s shoes, these features are rendered invisible, but if they are faulty or useless, it will garner a negative response from the customer. Therefore, you see, the basics are an essential element to guarantee flawlessness. It is basic to expect a home to have a roof and walls and a diner to have utensils. With that being said, imagine if these features weren’t present. You would be sore if a restroom didn’t have water, but normally, you don’t think about it, do you?

When designing a product, we emphasise the wow factor, or the glitz and glam, but to ensure good-quality products and services, one must start with the basics.

One-Dimensional Attributes (Satisfiers or Performance)

Satisfiers features garner an immensely positive response from the customer. In the above image, they are also referred to as satisfiers. The shinier the features, the more customers are attracted. When making a purchase, the customer considers these features deeply, and they make quite the difference in this setting, or, as they say, more is good. More is what’s desired. Customers who buy a brand-new car receive brand-new seat covers and merchandise. These are game-changers for many buyers. Such gestures garner loyalty and high levels of satisfaction. These features can become the talk of the town. In simple words, when has free stuff not helped the case?

These features are not only desired but also garner a response when they are missing. These attributes can be overlooked and considered unnecessary, but customers respond positively when included in the product or service. If you book a hotel, you may be pleased to note that the linen is of fine quality, and the TV has multiple streaming options. 

Attractive Attributes (Delighters)

Delighters are delightful for customers and can improve your product or service’s performance. The extra or somewhat extravagant features that customers did not know they even wanted are noticed when they’re not present, as they were not expected. For example, fresh flowers at your table when dining or complimentary chocolates greeting you in your hotel room. These attributes garner emotionally positive responses from customers. One must execute them well. If the customer’s basic needs aren’t being met and you push a delighter, this will result in frustration. This is something to keep in mind.

Nowadays, the competition is quite cutthroat, so delighters can be just the nudge your business needs to attract customers.

Indifferent features do not make an impression on customers, much less garner a response. They go ignored, or in some cases,  complex designs in attempts to create unnecessary feature s can create a nuisance, mostly a waste of time and resources with features that become absolute. These features are indifferent to most customers but tend to cost the company money.

As the name suggests, reverse features have the opposite effect on the customer; instead of causing customer satisfaction and delight, they become a nuisance, creating issues. Their absence may cause delight. That being said, the feature itself cuts away at the budget, doing the company no favours. Reverse features are intended to be game changers but end up being the opposite.

How Does the Kano Model Work? And How do you Use it?

Imagine you are designing a product with your team. You have a budget and a deadline; you must make crucial decisions to guarantee the customer’s emotional response to these products’ attributes. Your team would list the features or wow factors that 

delight the customers. Budget accommodations need to be made. You get the statistics. It needs to be tactful and have a low failure expectation. That’s where you would need the Kano model, as these features will need to compete against each other in the following criteria:

Suppose they have the expected potential to satisfy customers versus the finances needed to fund them. In that case, this is the reason why the Kano Model is also known as the “Customer Delight vs. Implementation Investment” approach.

The Kano Model Questionnaire

As we read above, the Kano model has categories, which they assign to features. The Kano questionnaire has five options regarding how you feel about the feature based on five Likert scale points:

  • Don’t Care

In reference to the five  emotional response  types, the Kano questionnaire can be used, and two positive questions about the functionality of the product feature:

  • How do you feel if you have this feature?
  • How would you feel if there was more of the feature?

And the other negative set of questions are based on the dysfunctionality of the feature:

  • How do you feel if you do not have this feature?
  • How would you feel if there was less of a feature?

These questions, with reference to the image above, can be answered in a point-noted chart. There are five categories from which you can choose, which narrow down how you feel about a certain feature or attribute. The answer of these questions can be mapped to the above five dimensions as shown in the figure below:

Kano Model Analysis

For example, I am a product designer attempting to create lights sensitive to movement to be placed on porches or gardens. It is expensive to create products, especially considering the built-in sensors. How can I know what this product needs or customers’ responses to its various attributes?

Advantages and Disadvantages of Kano Model Analysis

Applying the Kano Model can benefit businesses, but we need to be clear about both the pros and cons of applying it in practice. The advantages of applying the Kano Analysis include:

  • The Kano model knows what the customer needs even when the customer does not. It can identify unnecessary and necessary 
  • It can wade through the plethora of options and pick the features that will garner a positive customer response.
  • Kano gives insights into the feature performance among all the other attributes. It narrows down your work for you.

The disadvantages of the Kano model analysis include the following:

  • Time consumption is an issue when performing a Kano model analysis. It might differ from how you want to learn if you’re in a time crunch.
  • The Kano model analysis does not consider financial limitations. Given budget cuts or limited resources, it might be unrealistic to apply certain features.
  • Customers might not understand the questions. They wouldn’t know they wanted a feature until they saw it.

A point to keep in mind when creating or adding features to a product is innovation. Customer demands and needs change over time, such as the ordinary phone. There was a time when smartphones and tablets were not the norm. It was all the rage when  Apple  released the first touchscreen phone, and the world shifted. Nowadays, a touchscreen phone is a basic attribute. The point is that innovation is key.

Kano model questionnaire:

As we read above, the Kano model has categories, which they assign to features. The Kano questionnaire has five options regarding how you feel about the product.

  • I expect it.
  • I am neutral.
  • I can tolerate it.
  • I dislike it 

In reference to the five emotional response types, the Kano questionnaire can be used, and two crucial questions should be raised.

  • How does this particular feature feel to you?
  • How would you feel if this feature were not present?

These questions, with reference to the image above, can be answered in a point-noted chart. There are five categories from which you can choose, which really narrow down how you feel about a certain feature or attribute.

For example, I am a product designer attempting to create lights that are sensitive to movement to be placed on porches or gardens. It is expensive to create products, especially considering the built-in sensors. How can I know what this product needs or customers’ responses to its various attributes?

Advantages and disadvantages of kano analysis:

  • The Kano model knows what the customer needs even when the customer does not. It can identify unnecessary and necessary 

Disadvantages of Kano model analysis:

  • Time consumption is an issue when performing a Kano model analysis. If you’re in a time crunch, it might not be the way you want to lean.
  • The Kano model analysis does not consider financial limitations. It might be unrealistic to apply certain features given budget cuts.

A point to keep in mind when creating or adding features to a product is innovation. Customer demands and needs change over time, such as the ordinary phone. There was a time when smartphones and tablets were not the norm. It was all the rage when Apple released the first touchscreen phone, and the world shifted. Nowadays, a touchscreen phone is a basic attribute. The point is that innovation is key.

The Kano model analysis helped us understand customer needs. The functionality of a product is not the only thing that matters; customer emotions are also of importance. This tool has changed product design and customer response, made meaningful experiences and brought value to the customer, focusing on satisfaction and delight. The model is simple and to the point, which is what makes it so much easier to apply when designing products or services. Who doesn’t want a guarantee of success for their product? I think applying the Kano model points in the direction of success. It all boils down to customer satisfaction. The Kano model is a guide, but you have to be the creator. 

Designorate team is a group of authors and editors who write for Designorate and share their insight and passion with you, our amazing reader!

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The Complete Guide to the Kano Model

A step-by-step, in-depth guide to using the Kano Model to prioritize your backlog for customer satisfaction and delight

Published Jun 5, 2015 (Updated Sep 29, 2022 )

Your feature backlog seems endless — it has contributions from your team, internal stakeholders, customers, prospects and anyone with a say on the product (yes, even yourself.)

You cannot build everything “right now” like everyone’s demanding. You don’t want to put everything in (and you shouldn’t .) You may have very good hunches of what works and what doesn’t, but you want data to support your decisions , either to be certain or to present to the rest of the organization.

You want to create a product roadmap with the right features . There are many different reasons why you might need to include a given feature, but what do you do in order to know which ones will make your (future) customers happy and prefer it over others?

Creating products that satisfy our customers is a very common topic in UX Design and Product Management circles. This is natural; it is after all, the end goal of our jobs. But…

  • How do we measure satisfaction?
  • How do we choose what to build in order to provide it?
  • How do we go beyond satisfaction into delight ?

These questions are not easy to answer, but thankfully there’s a very useful tool to guide us through them: the Kano Model .

I’ve gone through every online resource I could find (including some scientific research) to create this step-by-step, in-depth guide with everything you need to understand, use, and get started today with the Kano Model.

You can read the post here, or click here to download it as a PDF (along with a spreadsheet that runs the numbers for you) .

So, What is the Kano Model? #

Noriaki Kano , a Japanese researcher and consultant, published a paper in 1984 [1] with a set of ideas and techniques that help us determine our customers’ (and prospects’) satisfaction with product features. These ideas are commonly called the Kano Model and are based upon the following premises:

  • Customers’ Satisfaction with our product’s features depends on the level of Functionality that is provided (how much or how well they’re implemented);
  • Features can be classified into four categories ;
  • You can determine how customers feel about a feature through a questionnaire .

Let’s go over each of them.

Satisfaction vs Functionality #

Kano dimensions

It all starts with our goal: Satisfaction . Kano proposes a dimension that goes from total satisfaction (also called Delight and Excitement ) to total dissatisfaction (or Frustration ).

The Satisfaction dimension

In the image above, the dimension is annotated with different satisfaction levels. It’s important to note that this is not (always) a linear scale, as we’ll see in a second.

You might think that you’d always want to be at the top of that scale, right? Well, it’s not possible.

That’s where the Functionality comes in. Also called Investment , Sophistication* or Implementation , it represents how much of a given feature the customer gets, how well we’ve implemented it, or how much we’ve invested in its development.

The Functionality dimension

This dimension goes from no functionality at all, to the best possible implementation. That’s why the term Investment is also very good for this concept. It is clear in reminding us of the cost of doing something.

Naming aside, what’s really important is to know that these two dimensions put together are the basis of the Kano Model and determine how our customers feel about our product’s features , as we’ll see in the next section.

The Four Categories of Features #

Kano classifies features into four categories, depending on how customers react to the provided level of Functionality.

The full Kano model

Performance #

Some product features behave as what we might intuitively think that Satisfaction works: the more we provide, the more satisfied our customers become. Because of this proportional relation between Functionality and Satisfaction, these features are usually called Linear , Performance or One-Dimensional attributes in the Kano literature (I prefer Performance ).

When you’re buying a car, its gas mileage is usually a Performance attribute. Other examples might be your internet connection speed; laptop battery life; or the storage space in your Dropbox account. The more you have of each of those, the greater your satisfaction.

Performance attributes

Going back to the graphic representation for the model, we see the dynamics of customers’ reaction to this kind of feature. Every increase in functionality leads to increased satisfaction. It’s also important to keep in mind that the more functionality we add, the bigger the investment we have to make there (e.g. the team to build it, the required resources, etc.)

Other product features are simply expected by customers. If the product doesn’t have them, it will be considered to be incomplete or just plain bad. This type of features is usually called Must-be or Basic Expectations .

Here’s the deal with these features: we need to have them, but that won’t make our customers more satisfied. They just won’t be dissatisfied .

We expect our phones to be able to make calls. Our hotel room should have running water and a bed. The car should have brakes. Having any of these won’t make us happy, but lacking them will definitely make us angry towards the product or service.

Must-be attributes

Notice how the satisfaction curve behaves. Even the slightest bit of investment goes a long way in increasing satisfaction. But also notice how satisfaction never even reaches the positive side of the dimension. No matter what we invest in the feature, we won’t ever make our customers more satisfied with the product. The good news is that once a basic level of expectations is reached, you don’t have to keep investing in it.

Attractive #

There are unexpected features which, when presented, cause a positive reaction. These are usually called Attractive , Exciters or Delighters . I tend to prefer the term Attractive , because it conveys the notion that we’re talking about a scale. We can have reactions ranging from mild attractiveness to absolute delight, and still have everything fit under the “Attractive” name.

The first time we used an iPhone, we were not expecting such a fluid touchscreen interface, and it blew us away . Think of the first time you used Google Maps or Google Docs. You know, that feeling you get when experiencing something beyond what you know and expect from similar products.

Just remember that our brains don’t have to explode for something to fall under this category. It might be anything that makes you go: “Hey, that’s nice!”.

Attractive attributes

This is best explained graphically. Look how even some level of Functionality leads to increased Satisfaction, and how quickly it rises. This fact is key to keep a check on the investment we make on a given feature. Beyond a certain point, we’re just over-killing it.

Indifferent #

Naturally, there are also features towards which we feel indifferent . Those which their presence (or absence) doesn’t make a real difference in our reaction to the product.

Indifferent attributes

These features fall along the middle of the Satisfaction dimension (where the horizontal axis intersects it.) That means it doesn’t matter how much effort we put into them, users won’t really care. This is another way of saying we should really avoid working on these because they’re essentially money sinks .

The Natural Decay of Delight #

Now that we have a complete picture of all the Kano categories of features, it’s important to take note of a fundamental fact: they are not static — they change over time.

What our customers feel about some product attribute now is not what they’ll feel in the future. Attractive features turn into Performance and Must-be features as time goes by.

Consider the iPhone example again; the sort of fluid touchscreen interaction that wowed us in 2007 by now is just a basic expectation.

Go back to every memory of amazement you’ve experienced with past products. How would you feel if the same product was presented to you now? When enough time has passed, it’s very likely that you’ll consider that once magic feature as a Performance or Must-be attribute.

This disenchantment is due to many different factors, including technological evolution and the emergence of competitors, all vying to bring the same functionality after the first mover.

The takeaway here is that any analysis we do at a given point in time is just a photograph reflecting that moment’s reality. The farther we get from that point, the less relevant it will seem. Unlike diamonds, Kano categories are not forever .

The Question Pair that Uncovers Customer Perceptions #

We’ve now covered the first two parts of the Kano model: the dimensions of analysis and their interplay to define categories of features .

In order to uncover our customer’s perceptions towards our product’s attributes, we need to use the Kano questionnaire . It consists of a pair of questions for each feature we want to evaluate:

  • One asks our customers how they feel if they have the feature ;
  • The other asks how they feel if they did not have the feature .

The first question is called the functional form and the second one is the dysfunctional form (they’re also called positive and negative by Jan Moorman .) These are not open-ended questions, though. There are very specific options we should use. To each “how do you feel if you had / did not have this feature”, the possible answers are:

  • I expect it
  • I am neutral
  • I can tolerate it
  • I dislike it

There are some things to consider when wording these options, and we’ll get to those later.

After asking our customers (or prospects) these two questions, and getting their answers, we are now able to categorize each feature.

Evaluation table #

One of the great things about the Kano model is that it accounts for both having and not having some functionality. This shows the extent to which something is actually wanted, needed or indifferent for our customers.

We do this through an evaluation table that combines the functional and dysfunctional answers in its rows and columns (respectively), to get to one of the previously described categories. Each answer pair leads to one of those categories and a couple more that come from using this question format.

The standard Kano evaluation table

Two new categories #

Given the fact that we’re asking from both sides of the same thing, we’ll be able to tell if:

  • Someone has not fully understood the questions or feature we’re describing;
  • What we propose is actually the opposite of what they want.

These are not actual Kano categories; they’re mere artifacts of the questionnaire (but useful nevertheless).

If someone says she “dislikes” the functional version and “likes” the dysfunctional version, this person is clearly not interested in what we’re offering, and perhaps actually wants the opposite. This new category is called Reverse . If a majority of customers are telling you some feature is a Reverse , you can just switch the Functional and Dysfunctional questions and score their answers as if you had asked the questions in that order.

When you get conflicting responses (such as “Like” and “Like”) to both questions, you have a Questionable answer. For this very reason, Fred Pouliot [2] suggested that cells (2,2) and (4,4) from the standard Kano evaluation table be changed to also be Questionable. Some of these are to be expected in your results, but if you get a majority of users with Questionable answers, there’s probably something wrong with what you’re asking.

A (slightly) revised evaluation table #

From now on, we’ll be using Pouliot’s slightly revised table to classify our answers.

Modified Kano evaluation table

We should try to internalize how each category is derived from a pair of responses, to better understand the model and avoid needing to reference the table every time.

We’ve already covered where Questionable answers (contradictory response pairs); they form a diagonal through the evaluation table, except for the middle cell.

Performance features are the most straightforward to position. They are the ones where customers like having them and dislike not having . This extreme reaction translates the linear “more is better” relation between these two dimensions.

Must-be features are the remaining cases when a customer dislikes not having them . Customers go from tolerating to expecting to have the feature.

Attractive features are found when a customer likes having a feature that is not expected . This is another way of saying that what we’re proposing is both new and attractive.

We then have Indifferent features. These occur for any “I’m neutral” or “I can tolerate it” answer, for either the Functional or Dysfunctional questions. That is, they occupy the middle cells of the table (discounting any of the previously described categories).

Finally, we have Reverse answers positioned along two axes where reactions are either to like not having the feature or to dislike having it . You can see which category they’re the reversal of by flipping the Functional / Dysfunctional values. You can then know if it is a Reverse Performance, Attractive or Must-be feature.

Using the Kano Model #

Now that we have a basic understanding of how the Kano model works, it’s time to go over what it means to use it with multiple users and features.

Our goal as Product Managers and UX Designers is to determine which features lead to more satisfied customers and use that information to help us prioritize what we need to build. There are important details to consider in order to get there.

This section is based upon multiple accounts of Kano model usage by practitioners and researchers that have shared their experiences and lessons learned, at each step of the process:

  • Choosing features and users for analysis;
  • Getting the (best possible) data from customers;
  • Analyzing the results.

Step 1: Choose your target features and users #

The first thing to consider is the scope of your analysis — both in terms of features and users.

Choosing features #

The features you choose to study should be those where the user will get any sort of meaningful benefit out of them . Your backlog may contain a number of different kinds of items you may need to include such as technical debt payment , something for the sales or marketing teams, a reporting system, or a design refresh. All of these are out of scope of the Kano analysis.

We’re measuring customer satisfaction among externally tangible features, but products are way more than that. If you need data to support not doing something an internal stakeholder is asking of you, you’ll be doing a disservice to your team, your customers and yourself if you use a Kano study for that.

Also try to limit the amount of features you include in your survey, specially if you’re doing the study with volunteer participants. This should improve your participation levels and your subjects’ available attention.

Selecting customers #

When selecting customers (or prospects) to participate in your study, you must consider some demographic, logical cohort or persona to which they belong. Otherwise, your data will most likely be all over the map [3] .

Your customer/prospect base is probably not homogenous and what they think of your feature won’t be either. But if you take into account some grouping to which they belong, you can significantly reduce the noise in your analysis.

Jan Moorman detected the importance of this when presenting features for a new product to a group of potential users [4] . A core feature of the product was already present and was (supposedly) well known from the competition’s product. Nevertheless, a subset of users still considered it to be Attractive while another considered it Must-be. She then came to the conclusion that these distinct reactions were due to their market savvy*. When she segmented their responses by their profile (as early , late and non adopters ), the results for each feature were then much clearer.

There are plenty of possible segmentations and you must choose what makes sense for your product. Suppose you’re working on a B2B SaaS. If you’re considering adding a feature that lets users associate invoices to purchase orders, its attractiveness to a small business is very different to that of an enterprise customer.

You should keep this point in mind either when selecting users to study (because you know your feature’s target) or afterwards, when analyzing your survey’s results.

Step 2: Getting the (best possible) data from your customers #

The questionnaire and how you present it is your only input method to the Kano study. Thus, you should ensure this step is as effective as you can possibly make it.

Write clear questions #

It’s critical to make your questions as clear and succinct as possible. Each should stand for a single feature . If the feature is complex and requires multiple steps and sub-processes, you should probably break the question down.

Your questions should be phrased in terms of benefits to the user , and not in terms of what the product will be able to do. For instance, “if you can automatically improve how your photo looks, how do you feel?” is better that “if you have MagicFix ™, how do you feel?”.

Be careful with polar wording of question pairs. That is, the dysfunctional question is not necessarily the opposite of the functional one; it’s just the absence of the functionality . Here’s an example for a video editing app considering optimizing their exporting speed:

  • Functional question: “If exporting any video takes under 10 seconds, how do you feel?”
  • Incorrect dysfunctional question: “If exporting any video takes longer than 10 seconds, how do you feel?”
  • Preferable dysfunctional question: “If exporting some videos takes longer than 10 seconds, how do you feel?”

Better than writing about features is to show them #

Whenever possible, something that’s even better than writing clear questions is to actually show the functionality to the customer and then ask how she feels having it or not having it.

We can describe a feature’s benefits and then show a prototype and interactive wireframes or mockups in place of a textual question. By having this visual and dynamic “explanation”, the the user can have an even clearer understanding of what’s being proposed to her.

If you’re presenting your question in this form, you should ask for the standard responses right after the user interacting with the feature prototype. Just as if it were a textual descriptive question. This should keep their memory fresh, without confusing it with other features you may be presenting in the same survey.

Be mindful of the answers’ phrasing and understanding #

Some people feel confused by the ordering of the standard answers in the Kano questionnaire [5] . Usually, they don’t understand why “I like it that way” appears before “It must be that way”, as it seems a much softer statement.

The logic for presenting the answers this way is that they fall along a scale from pleasure to avoidance of displeasure. Here are some alternative wording proposals that have been suggested, such as:

  • I enjoy it that way
  • It is a basic necessity or I expect it that way
  • I dislike it, but I can live with it that way
  • I dislike it, and I can’t accept it

Or this one, by Robert Blauth’s team:

  • This would be very helpful to me
  • This is a basic requirement for me
  • This would not affect me
  • This would be a minor inconvenience
  • This would be a major problem for me

I actually think the list of options introduced at the start of this guide has the best balance between clarity and brevity.

The takeaway is that we need to be mindful of how these options are interpreted and that it’s important to make sure respondents understand the goals of the questionnaire . Selecting the set of answers that best fit your case and explaining participants the wording of the options beforehand should give you much better results.

Ask the customer about the feature’s importance #

One important addition to the Kano methodology, suggested by multiple teams [6] is to include another question after the functional/dysfunctional pair. This question asks customers how important a given feature is to them.

Having this piece of information is very useful to distinguish features among each other and know which are most relevant to customers. It gives you a tool to separate big features from small ones and how they impact your customer’s decisions on the product.

The self-stated importance question may be asked in the following format: “How important is it or would it be if: <requirement>?”. For example, “How important is it or would it be if: exporting videos always takes less than 10 seconds?”.

Responses should be in the form of a scale from 1 to 9, going from Not at all important to Extremely important.

Importance scale

Test your questionnaire #

If possible, test the questionnaire with some of your team members , before presenting it to your customers. If there’s any internal confusion about it, there will certainly be when talking with people from the outside.

Step 3: Analyze the Results #

We now get to the step that motivated our study. After tabulating and processing our results we should be able to categorize our features and get insights into the best way to prioritize them.

There are two levels of analysis we can go into: discrete and continuous . These terms are just something I came up with due to lack of any standard (or better) ones for these methods. Both are references to mathematical concepts and relate to how they map participants’ responses to the Kano categories.

Each approach is useful, depending on the type of insights you’re looking for.

Discrete Analysis #

The simplest way we can work through the Kano results is to:

  • Divide respondents by the demographic / persona criteria that defines them;
  • Categorize each respondent’s answers using the Evaluation table;
  • Tally the total responses in each category for each feature (and demographic);
  • Each feature’s category will be the most frequent response (i.e., the mode );
  • In case of close results between categories, use the following rule (leftmost wins): Must-be > Performance > Attractive > Indifferent;
  • If you’ve asked respondents for a self-stated importance ranking (and you should), average that for each feature.

You’ll end up with a table like this one:

Results Table with Frequency

If you’re seeing multiple results without a clear category, there may hidden customer profiles that you’re not considering. In this case you should probably go back to the customer responses to look for patterns; try checking which customers’ answers are usually the same as other customers’, to find “demographic clusters” you may be missing.

From the results table, you can rank features according to their importance. After that, the general rule of thumb to use when prioritizing is to go after all Must-be features, then add as much Performance ones as you can and finally include a few Attractive ones.

This type of analysis is great to give you a first level of understanding and it’s useful in many contexts where you don’t need a more rigorous approach (e.g., testing design ideas or making a rough draft of your roadmap.)

Continuous Analysis #

Although the discrete analysis is great to get us started and give us an overall sense of the results, it has several issues. Namely:

  • We lose a lot of information along the way. First, from 25 answer combinations for each respondent to one of six categories. Then, all respondent’s answers get further reduced into a single category for each feature;
  • We don’t have any sense of the variance in our data;
  • Softer answers get the same weight as harder ones. Just think about an Attractive with a dysfunctional “expect it” vs “live with”.

Bill DuMouchel [7] proposed an excellent continuous analysis methodology, explained over the next few sections. Don’t worry about having to do these calculations yourself, though; the spreadsheet that comes along with this guide already does all of them or you ( click here to get it ). For now, just focus on understanding each step.

Scoring Answers #

First, each answer option is translated to a numerical value within a satisfaction potential scale, going from -2 to 4. The bigger the number, the more an answer reflects how much the customer wants the feature. Importance is also scored from 1 to 9, as before.

  • Functional : -2 (Dislike), -1 (Live with), 0 (Neutral), 2 (Must-be), 4 (Like);
  • Dysfunctional : -2 (Like), -1 (Must be), 0 (Neutral), 2 (Live with), 4 (Dislike);
  • Importance : 1 (Not at all Important), …, 9 (Extremely Important.)

You may be thinking that the Dysfunctional scale seems backwards. It’s not. Higher (positive) scores mean larger satisfaction potential . In the case of Dysfunctional answers, Disliking something means there’s strong disagreement with the feature’s absence. Thus, there would be more satisfaction potential if it were included and that’s why it has a bigger score.

The reason for this asymmetrical scale (starting from -2 instead of -4) is that the categories you get from answers on the negative end (Reverse and Questionable) are weaker than what you get on the positive end (Must-be and Performance) . Thus, DuMouchel decided to emphasize that side of the scale.

These scores will then lead to the categorization of our features within a two-dimensional plane. With this method, there’s no need for the standard evaluation table anymore .

2D Categorization

Our focus should be on the positive quadrant, which holds the strongest responses . Outside of it, we find weaker answers as well as Questionable and Reverse categorizations. If a feature ends up as Reverse, you can always use the trick of defining it as the opposite and switching the Functional and Dysfunctional scores, so it gets classified into another Kano category; you can also drop it from your study.

A sidenote: Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction coefficients #

If you dig around for Kano resources, you’ll probably find references to Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction coefficients . With the DuMouchel methodology we’re describing here, we have a better alternative to these. But given how often they’re referenced, they at least warrant a brief introduction.

Mike Timko proposed using “Better” and “Worse” scores that reflected, in numerical terms, how customers’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction would change by the presence/absence of a feature [8] . Although he doesn’t call them Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction Coefficients in the original paper, that’s their commonly known name. By considering the total number of answers in each category for a given feature, they’re calculated using these formulas:

Coefficient Formulas

Although they do produce a numerical result and are useful for relative comparisons, these coefficients have multiple issues that Timko himself referred in his article. The main thing is that it suffers from the same problem that discrete analysis has: these numbers come from using a single Kano category from each answer. This loss of information leads to higher variance in the data and equal weighting of all answers, independently of how strong or weak they are.

The Functional and Dysfunctional scores we’re calculating with DuMuchel’s method serve the same purpose without these issues, and that’s why we’re focusing on them here.

Categorizing Features #

If we have numbers for each possible answer, that means we can work with averages. Here’s what we need to calculate for each feature:

  • The average Functional, Dysfunctional and Importance values over all answers;
  • The standard deviation for the Functional, Dysfunctional and Importance scores.

Taking each feature’s Functional and Dysfunctional scores, we can place them on the categorization plane like this:

Feature plot

We’re of course talking about averages and what they hide is the possibly large variations in our data. That’s why it’s useful to add the standard deviation to our graphic in the form of error bars, so we have a notion of how on or off target our categorizations are. Something like this:

Feature plot with error bars

The final layer to add is the Importance score. We can visualize this additional dimension by converting the scatter plot dots into bubbles, with sizes proportional to their importance. In this way, we can easily compare among features with similar positioning.

Feature Plot With Error Bars and Importance

The general prioritization rule of thumb presented in the discrete analysis section still holds: Must-be > Performance > Attractive > Indifferent. This translates very well to graphical terms:

Feature Plot Prioritization

For small feature sets, another (and probably better) way to visualize this is through a stack ranked list [9] . It uses three columns to rank features, in this order (from higher to lower scores): potential for dissatisfaction, potential for satisfaction and importance. In our case, the first two columns are the Dysfunctional and Functional scores, respectively. Here’s how it looks:

Continuous Results Table

Notice the last two rows. What would you do in that situation? You have a feature that it’s an Indifferent (but actually quite near Must-be,) with a larger impact on dissatisfaction than another. The other one would greatly increase satisfaction and it’s deemed to be really important by customers. There are cases to be made for prioritizing one before the other. As you can see, just following some ranking order doesn’t solve every dilemma for us; we still need to make tough calls, experiment, measure and iterate if necessary.

Get started today: an approach (and toolset) to launch your own Kano study #

That’s it. You’ve made it this far and you have now learned about every important aspect of the Kano model. Now it’s time to actually use it in practice .

I realize it’s not immediately clear how to take all this knowledge and make it work for you. But you can. Even today if you want to .

In this section we’ll go over a practical approach and set of tools you can use to conduct your very own Kano analysis . Let’s go back to the 3 step process that was introduced in the second section of this guide.

You’re probably working on some new features and ideas for your next product release. If you aren’t, you should follow along anyways, even though you might not apply this right now.

Out of the features/ideas you’re working on:

  • Which ones are you struggling to prioritize?
  • Which ones have direct impact for your customers?
  • Pick 3, at most (you can always do larger studies later, after getting comfortable with all of this.)

Which demographics (or personas ) are these features targeting? Pick 15 customers (or more) per each demographic . If you’re using Intercom or Mixpanel , it will be very easy to select a subset of your customers within your target.

Step 2: Get the (best possible) data from your customers #

There are two parts to this step:

  • Defining the questions to ask our customers (or prospects);
  • Creating and distributing the survey to gather responses.

Defining the questions #

There are two types of questions you can present in your survey: interaction-based and text-based.

Interaction-based #

If you work on a Software product, you probably have wireframes or mockups for your ideas and feature specifications. If you do, you already have the best possible “question” to present to your respondents.

What you need is to make those wireframes or mockups interactive (if they aren’t already).

Using a tool like Balsamiq or InVision , link your wireframes together so they’re interactive. This will make the feature come alive for the user and help overcome any problems in your question’s wording.

Text-based #

If you don’t have any available wireframes or mockups, you can still use the traditional text-based questions. You should however be extra careful in creating a question that is clear and effective. Go back to that section if you need to refresh that topic.

Creating and distributing the survey #

Now of course you need to create a survey to capture responses. There are some things to consider:

  • Add a very short explanation of the survey’s goal, answer format and what respondents need to do;
  • If you’re using an interactive wireframe, you should very briefly describe the goal of the feature, provide a link to the wireframes and ask the user to come back to the survey [10] ;
  • You should capture a customer identifier in your survey (like their email), so you can later know which users have responded and the demographics/persona to which they belong.

You can create a Google Form with an email field pre-filled by using an URL parameter [11] . If you send your users something like this, you’ll get identified responses without them having to input their email address (or some other identifier you may need on your end).

After gathering enough responses, you can now proceed to the analysis step.

Along with this guide you also also get an Excel spreadsheet that will jumpstart your analysis. It does the following for you:

  • From each response (functional, dysfunctional and importance), calculates the discrete category, functional and dysfunctional scores;
  • Calculates each feature’s discrete and continuous Kano categorization;
  • Automatically stack ranks features based on potential dissatisfaction, satisfaction and importance;
  • Draws a scatter plot graph that shows each feature’s positioning, relative importance as well as data variance through error bars.

You only need to copy & paste your survey results into the spreadsheet and add some details about your data (features and users).

You will get a Kano-based suggested prioritization in no time. From this, you can easily play with the data, make some pivot tables and start drilling into the details.

Final thoughts #

There are no silver bullets when it comes to prioritizing our product’s features. Although we have to consider many different dimensions, customer satisfaction is probably the most important one. This led us to the questions from which we started out:

  • How do we go beyond satisfaction and into delight ?

These questions don’t have definitive answers (if they ever do, we all need to look for another job) [12] .

What this guide has hopefully given you is another tool to add to your arsenal for making kick-ass products: the Kano model. You’ve learned about what it is , how to use it and how to get started, today .

Try it out. Adapt it. Make it your own. Drive your product towards delight and let me know how it goes .

Noriaki Kano et al., “Attractive Quality and Must-be Quality,” research summary of a presentation given at Nippon QC Gakka: 12th Annual Meeting (1982), January 18, 1984 ↩︎

Pouliot, Fred, “Theoretical Issues of Kano’s Methods” on “Kano’s Methods for Understanding Customer-defined Quality”, Center for Quality of Management Journal, Fall 1993 ↩︎

Diane Shen, “Developing and Administering Kano Questionnaires” on “Kano’s Methods for Understanding Customer-defined Quality”, Center for Quality of Management Journal, Fall 1993 ↩︎

Jan Moorman, “Measuring User Delight using the Kano Methodology,” https://vimeo.com/62646585 , Interaction13 conference, Toronto, January 2013 ↩︎

Gary Burchill, “Observation of the Use of Kano’s Method” on “Kano’s Methods for Understanding Customer-defined Quality”, Center for Quality of Management Journal, Fall 1993 ↩︎

Robert Blauth, Reinhart Richter and Allan Rubinoff, “Experience in the Use of Kano’s Methods in the Specification of BBN RS/1 Release 5.0” on “Kano’s Methods for Understanding Customer-defined Quality”, Center for Quality of Management Journal, Fall 1993 ↩︎

William DuMouchel, “Thoughts on Graphical and Continuous Analysis” on “Kano’s Methods for Understanding Customer-defined Quality”, Center for Quality of Management Journal, Fall 1993 ↩︎

Mike Timko, “An Experiment in Continuous Analysis” on “Kano’s Methods for Understanding Customer-defined Quality”, Center for Quality of Management Journal, Fall 1993 ↩︎

You can also check out UX Clinic’s case study with both stack ranked and scatter plot visualizations ↩︎

You also add a special note in the end of your interactive wireframe, asking users to close that tab and go back to the survey ↩︎

Get the base URL to send out by using this tip and then change the email field for each customer ↩︎

Check out this fascinating presentation by Jared Spool on the depth of getting to delight ↩︎

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How to Use the Kano Model to Prioritize Features

How can product managers use the Kano Model to prioritize their roadmaps? Kano Model feature prioritization typically consists of three main steps: research, analyze, decide. We’ll break them down step by step in this article.

Step 1: Research (conduct a Kano Study)

The first step is designing and running a Kano study. This is your opportunity to collect valuable Voice of Customer (VoC) information about the features you want to prioritize. It’s advised to ask two questions for each feature or initiative.

  • A functional or positive question. This explores how they would feel WITH said feature.
  • A dysfunctional or negative question. Explores how they would feel WITHOUT said feature.

Rather than leaving the answers to these questions open-ended, you want to have respondents use a scale. This makes the next step (analyzing the data) easier.

Liz Milliken of SurveyGizmo suggests a five-point scale for Kano study responses :

  • Don’t care

define kano analysis

As for how many people to include in your Kano study, that’s largely up to you. Jan Moorman, Principal Design Researcher for projekt202, says her team’s magic Kano study size is somewhere between 12 and 24 customers.

“The goal is to include enough users to perceive differences with statistical confidence. The number of users required to accomplish this goal depends on two key factors: The diversity of the people included in the study and the granularity of differences you are attempting to measure,” she explains.

A few other considerations when selecting participants and study size:

  • Will you later want to break down responses by personas? If so, you should ensure you have enough representation for each persona you’d like to look at.

Get the Product Roadmap Kit ➜

Step 2: Analyze the results of your Kano Study

The next step is to analyze the data you’ve collected from your user surveys or questionnaires. As Daniel Zacarias explains, you can take two different approaches to analyzing your Kano study results—discrete analysis or continuous analysis. (You can also use both.)

For each type of analysis, you will use a table to record a set of scores for all potential features.

Discrete analysis

For many, this is the simplest method of analyzing Kano study data, but it is also the most superficial in terms of getting you to the answers you need.

With a discrete analysis, you will simply divide respondents by their respective demographic or persona criteria, categorize each respondent’s answers (which range from 1 to 9 for each question), and then add up the total responses in each category for each feature. The resulting table will look like this:

Continuous analysis

A much more rigorous method of analyzing your Kano study data is through continuous analysis.

Using this approach, you will convert each respondent’s answer to a score of “satisfaction potential” ranging from -2 to 4, and based on a scale of how much the respondent views the inclusion or exclusion of a feature as “functional” or “dysfunctional.” (A higher dysfunctional score here actually means users desire the feature because they view its absence from the product as dysfunctional.)

Conducting a continuous analysis of your data will often yield a much richer and more accurate view of what your customers value and want to see in your product. That table will look like this:

For more examples of tables for Kano study analysis, check out Daniel Zacarias’s guide:  How to analyze your Kano study results .

Step 3: Prioritize and make decisions

After you’ve determined what the data from your Kano study are telling you, you will have to decide how to respond to those answers.

You probably won’t have time or resources to implement all of the features your respondents have indicated they want. So how you should decide which ones make it onto the roadmap for immediate work, which get pushed out to a longer-term time horizon on the roadmap, and which you’ll send back to the backlog for now?

The proper strategy in most cases, according to Zacarias, is to prioritize all “Must-be” (basic) features first, then as many Performance features as possible, and then add some “Attractive” (customer delight) features if you can. (Need some inspiration? here are some examples of excitement features .)

define kano analysis

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Prioritization and Backlog

Company news and updates, templates and workbooks, remote product management, product metrics and analytics, product strategy example, product managers, tools and resources, customer-centricity, product leadership, product management, roadmap and roadmap management, product strategy, agile & product development, career and interviews, try productplan free for 14 days, share on mastodon.

define kano analysis

The Kano Model: Critical to Quality Characteristics and VOC

E. George Woodley

Thank you for visiting PEXNetwork.com. For more recent articles on process improvement and operational excellence, check our latest articles .

What are the origins of the Kano Model? Dr. Noriaki Kano , a very astute student of Dr. Ishikawa , developed an interesting model to address the various ways in which Six Sigma practitioners could prioritize customer needs. This becomes particularly important when trying to rank the customer’s wants and desires in a logical fashion. The Practical Side to the Kano Model The Kano model is a tool that can be used to prioritize the Critical to Quality characteristics, as defined by the Voice of the Customer , which I will explain in greater detail below. The three categories identified by the Kano model are:

  • Must Be: The quality characteristic must be present or the customer will go elsewhere.
  • Performance: The better we are at meeting these needs, the happier the customer is.
  • Delighter: Those qualities that the customer was not expecting but received as a bonus.

define kano analysis

Table 1 For my own interest, I asked him to look at these same characteristics from the point of view of a vacationing family. As a final task, I asked him to assess how strong or weak he felt the hotel was when trying to meet those quality characteristics identified in table 1. The results are shown in Table 2.

The conclusions from this effort can be as summarized by looking at the rows that have a characteristic in the Must Be category. With respect to the business client, this yielded express checkout, a comfortable bed, continental breakfast, internet hook-up and newspaper. The vacationer, on the other hand, had Must Be s that included price, comfortable bed, cable/HBO and a swimming pool. Of these quality characteristics, the manager realized that the hotel was weak in the check-in and express checkout process, and internet hook-up. This Kano model exercise allowed the manager to better address the needs of the customer, based on their Critical to Quality characteristics. Now the work begins to minimize the gap of where the hotel is with respect to where the hotel wants to be. One final thought: If a characteristic is not on the list, does that mean it can be ignored?

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COMMENTS

  1. Kano Analysis: the Kano Model Explained

    What is kano analysis? The Kano Analysis model (pronounced "Kah-no"), also known as the "Customer Delight vs. Implementation Investment" approach, is an analysis tool that enables you to understand how customer emotional responses to products or features can be measured and explored.

  2. What is the Kano Model?

    The Kano Model (pronounced "Kah-no") is an approach to prioritizing features on a product roadmap based on the degree to which they are likely to satisfy customers. Product teams can weigh a high-satisfaction feature against its costs to implement to determine whether or not adding it to the roadmap is a strategically sound decision.

  3. Meeting Customer Expectations with Kano Analysis

    Kano analysis, based on the Kano model developed by Professor Noriaki Kano, is a product and service development and customer satisfaction tool that categorizes and classifies customer requirements and preferences.

  4. Kano model

    The Kano model is a theory for product development and customer satisfaction developed in the 1980s by Noriaki Kano, which classifies customer preferences into five categories. Categories

  5. What is the Kano Model? Diagram, Analysis & Tutorial

    Diagram, Analysis & Tutorial | ASQ / Quality Resources / Kano Model What is the Kano Model? Quality Glossary Definition: Kano model It's commonly believed that customers don't really know what they want; they have to be told. The truth is customers do know what they want, but they may not be proficient at describing their needs.

  6. Examples & definition of the Kano Analysis

    KANO Analysis: The Complete Guide Appinio Research · 20.10.2022 · 9min read Content Creating products or services that will satisfy your customers' needs is the ultimate goal for any team. While numerous ideas may be available, it's important to prioritize the development of product/service features in a customer-centric way.

  7. KANO model: What it is, Importance, Uses & How It Works

    The Kano Model, pronounced "Kah-no," is a method for quality management in prioritizing features on a product roadmap based on how likely they are to please customers, as customers expect specific necessities to be met.

  8. The Kano Analysis: Customer Needs Are Ever Changing

    The Kano analysis helps to identify unspoken needs before prioritization. It is intended to help prioritize customer needs. It should be linked to a company's multi-generational project plan. Generation 1 has to cover the "must be's.". The company must realize that customers' expectations and/or needs vary over time.

  9. Understanding the Kano Model: A Comprehensive Guide

    The Kano Model, pronounced as "Kah-no," is a product roadmap prioritization approach that considers the degree to which features can satisfy customers. It helps product teams weigh the benefits of high-satisfaction features against their implementation costs to determine their strategic value. The Kano Model is one of several prioritization ...

  10. Introduction to Kano Model

    The Kano model was first developed and published by Dr. Noriaki Kano, a Professor at the Tokyo University of Science, in 1984. Named after its original creator, the kano model is an analysis tool that serves to assess how the product features will impact customer satisfaction. The foundation of the kano model is the assumption that the value of ...

  11. Kano Model

    The Kano model is a framework designed to prioritize features based on the degree to which they will satisfy the users. In other words, a Kano model helps prioritize features based on how much the feature will aid the users.

  12. Kano Model Analysis

    What is Kano Model Analysis? The Kano Model of product development and customer satisfaction was published in 1984 by Dr Noriaki Kano, professor of quality management at the Tokyo University of Science. [1] Kano says that a product or service is about much more than just functionality. It is also about customers' emotions.

  13. What Is a Kano Model & How Do They Work?

    The Kano analysis can be applied to both digital and non-digital products. Also, the model can be applied at any phase of the product life cycle to evaluate and prioritize product features. 3 Steps to Making a Kano Model. When employing the Kano model, businesses conduct "Kano analysis." To achieve this, follow the steps below:

  14. Mapping Customer Expectations through Kano Analysis

    The Kano analysis is a valuable tool that is used to identify and categorize customer needs based on their preferences, comments, and reviews. The results of the analysis can then be considered when evaluating potential opportunities for improvement.

  15. Kano Model: Definition, Examples & More

    1. Expected levels of need needs are the non-negotiables that the product must have. Consumers take these features for granted; they assume they'll be there in every case. A Kano Model example of expected needs: tires and brakes on a car. 2. Normal levels of need Normal needs go one step further.

  16. What Is the Kano Model? Kano Model Definition, Origin & FAQ

    Definition of the Kano Model. The Kano Model is a framework for identifying the most important features when creating a product, based on the level of satisfaction they're expected to bring to users. Measuring and prioritizing key features via user satisfaction allows product teams to allocate suitable resources and time to the development of ...

  17. What is the Kano Analysis Model?

    The Kano model is a product development analysis tool that helps you understand customer preferences and the perceived value of your product's features. It categorizes customer preferences into five groups: Must-have features: If you don't have them in your product, the customer will be highly dissatisfied.

  18. What is Kano Model Analysis? And How to Conduct it

    The Kano model is a theory that focuses on customer satisfaction, relying on emotional responses to product quality and functionality. This model is simple but, more importantly, efficient and straightforward. It gains insight into how a customer responds to a service or product's versatile features and attributes.

  19. The Complete Guide to the Kano Model

    A step-by-step, in-depth guide to using the Kano Model to prioritize your backlog for customer satisfaction and delight. Your feature backlog seems endless — it has contributions from your team, internal stakeholders, customers, prospects and anyone with a say on the product (yes, even yourself.) You cannot build everything "right now ...

  20. The Kano Model Explained

    The Kano Model (pronounced "kah-no") is a unique approach to prioritizing new product features. In this video, we look at the theory behind the Kano model and show an example of how to ...more...

  21. How to Use the Kano Model to Prioritize Features

    Step 1: Research (conduct a Kano Study) The first step is designing and running a Kano study. This is your opportunity to collect valuable Voice of Customer (VoC) information about the features you want to prioritize. It's advised to ask two questions for each feature or initiative. A functional or positive question.

  22. The Kano Model: Critical to Quality Characteristics and VOC

    The Kano model is a tool that can be used to prioritize the Critical to Quality characteristics, as defined by the Voice of the Customer, which I will explain in greater detail below. The three categories identified by the Kano model are: Must Be: The quality characteristic must be present or the customer will go elsewhere.

  23. 7.5 Kano Analysis

    Kano Analysis is used to understand which product characteristics or qualities will prove to be a significant differentiator in the marketplace and help to drive customer satisfaction. ... Key Performance Indicators 6.13 Minimal Viable Product 6.14 Non-Functional Requirements Analysis 6.15 Personas 6.16 Problem Definition Analysis 6.17 Product ...