Kano Model
The Kano Model splits customer requirements into basic, performance and delighter needs, because each behaves differently: basics only cause dissatisfaction if missing, performance needs scale with investment, and delighters win loyalty nobody expected.
Three curves climb the chart at very different rates, one for basics, one for performance, one for delighters.
Reach for this when…
- The roadmap is a flat list and everything is fighting for the same priority.
- You keep adding features and satisfaction is not moving.
- You need to know which gap is actually costing you customers versus which would just be nice.
How to run it
- List candidate features or requirements.
- Ask customers a paired question for each: how they feel if it is present, and if it is absent.
- Classify each as basic, performance, or delighter from the answers.
- Fund basics to remove dissatisfaction first, however unglamorous.
- Invest the remainder across performance and one or two delighters.
A worked example
Situation. Min-jun Park ran Busan Mart, an online retailer in Busan, South Korea, and could not decide whether to spend the next budget on faster delivery or a slicker app.
Applied. Surveys showed accurate delivery tracking was a basic need customers simply expected, delivery speed was a performance need worth the spend, and a handwritten thank-you note packed with each order was an unexpected delighter.
Result. Busan Mart fixed tracking accuracy first, funded a same-day delivery tier second, and kept the thank-you note as a low-cost delighter that showed up unprompted in reviews.
The catch
Needs migrate over time, today's delighter becomes tomorrow's basic once competitors copy it, so the exercise needs repeating, not filing away. The paired-question survey is also easy to run badly, and small wording changes shift what people classify as basic versus performance. It says nothing about cost, so a cheap delighter can outrank an expensive one that would matter more.
A delighter you cannot afford to keep is a promise you are about to break.
Origin: Noriaki Kano