A Generalization Of Traditional Kano Model For Customer Requirements Analysis

Purpose: The theory of attractiveness determines the relationship between the technically achieved and customer perceived quality of product attributes. The most frequently used approach in the theory of attractiveness is the implementation of Kano‘s model. There exist a lot of generalizations of that model which take into consideration various aspects and approaches focused on understanding the customer preferences and identification of his priorities for a selling product. The aim of this article is to outline another possible generalization of Kano‘s model. Methodology/Approach: The traditional Kano’s model captures the nonlinear relationship between reached attributes of quality and customer requirements. The individual attributes of quality are divided into three main categories: must-be, one-dimensional, attractive quality and into two side categories: indifferent and reverse quality. The well selling product has to contain the must-be attribute. It should contain as many one-dimensional attributes as possible. If there are also supplementary attractive attributes, it means that attractiveness of the entire product, from the viewpoint of the customer, nonlinearly sharply rises what has a direct positive impact on a decision of potential customer when purchasing the product. In this article, we show that inclusion of individual quality attributes of a product to the mentioned categories depends, among other things, also on costs on life cycle of the product, respectively on a price of the product on the market. Findings: In practice, we are often encountering the inclusion of products into different price categories: lower, middle and upper class. For a certain type of products the category is either directly declared by a producer (especially in automotive industry), or is determined by a customer by means of assessment of available market prices. To each of those groups of a products different customer expectations can be assigned. In this paper, we investigate how the inclusion of a product into some price category influences a categorization of its quality attributes in the context of a Kano‘s model. Research Limitation/implication: The theory of attractiveness has a big sense for developers in designing new products. It is therefore natural to know the real demands of customers and prioritize different quality attributes of a product in terms of customers´perception. Sufficiently precise fulfilment of this requirement is however an open problem so far. Originality/Value of paper: The article points out certain dynamics in perception of individual attributes of quality by customers relative to inclusion of a product into some price categories. It is therefore a certain generalization of the fundamental principles of traditional Kano’s model.