Examination of common mistakes for successful leveraging the Kano model and proposal for enhancement

Abstract

The Kano model has been recognised for almost forty years as an effective tool for revealing implicit customer ideas that are often unclear and difficult to describe by relating the fulfilment of offering quality attributes to customer satisfaction. So has the Kano methodology for realising the model in practice in product design and development, strategic thinking, business planning, etc. Despite their success, it has long been reported that the Kano classification of customer requirements needs to reflect the level of customer satisfaction accurately. Researchers have focused on increasing the model’s accuracy throughout the years, especially by introducing much more quantitative approaches to the Kano categorisation. Still, the traditional one remains well-accepted in practice as it is the most straightforward logical procedure that non-experts can follow. Rather than introducing complexity, this research focuses on improving the traditional Kano model without altering its procedure by creating awareness of common mistakes when implementing the model and suggesting incorporating a couple of steps to avoid them. It is crucial to understand the selection of the five answer choices and their compatibility with the Kano evaluation table. Few case studies are available to illustrate how sensitive to common mistakes the outcomes are.