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Kano Model Analysis

Creating profitable products or services that genuinely excite customers by James Manktelow

Kano Model Analysis is a useful technique for deciding which features you want to include in a product or service.

It helps you break away from a profit-minimizing mindset that says you've got to have as many features as possible in a product, and helps you think more subtly about the features you include. This can be the difference between a product or service being profitable or unprofitable.

More than this, it helps you develop a product that will truly delight your customers.

Explaining the Kano Model:

According to the Kano Model (developed by Dr Noriaki Kano in the 1980s), a product or service can have three types of attribute (or property)...(Sign in to read more.)

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Tip: Where possible, get your customers to do the classification for you. Partly this will keep you close to your market, but partly it will keep you and even the most out-of-touch people in your company up-to-date with people’s changing expectations. Using the example above, only a few years ago, polyphonic ring tones (and even phone number lists!) were Excitement Attributes on cell phones. Also, make sure when you choose customers, that you choose customers who are typical of the market you want to sell to.

This is only one of the practical creativity techniques available on Mind Tools. Visit the Mind Tools creativity section for more.

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