Understanding Kano categories to make the right decisions

A deep-dive into the meaning of the Kano categories

How your product features are categorized informs your product roadmap. A feature's category defines your customers' perception of its value. A good understanding of what the Kano categories mean helps you make the right product decisions.

Dominici and Palumbo (2013) formulate this general advice:

[T]he strategic implications of the Kano Model are: fulfil all must-be requirements, be competitive regarding one-dimensional requirements, stand out with regard to attractive requirements, don’t spend time or money developing a requirement that is perceived as indifferent, and avoid reverse requirements.

If you haven't done so yet, read about the primer on Kano categories in the opening chapters of this guide first.

As a quick reminder, these are the categories used to classify answers:

Must-Be (M): the customer is satisfied if the feature is present and dissatisfied if it is not. Above a certain threshold of performance, satisfaction does not increase (think of the two salt cellars).

One-Dimensional (O): the better the performance of the feature, the higher the customer's satisfaction. Conversely, the lower its performance, the less satisfied the customer is.

Attract (A): the customer is satisfied with the presence of the feature (or its performance above a certain threshold). However, the customer is not dissatisfied by its absence (or underperformance).

Indifferent (I): Satisfaction is not impacted by the feature's presence or absence, nor by its (under)performance.

Reverse (R): Customer satisfaction is inversely related to the feature's performance or presence.

Questionable (Q): the answer the customer gave does not make sense.

To understand the Kano categories, it's worth examining what combinations of answers lead to each category.

Feature presence ↓	Feature absence →
	Like	Expect	Neutral	Accept	Dislike
Like	Q	A	A	A	O
Expect	R	I	I	I	M
Neutral	R	I	I	I	M
Accept	R	I	I	I	M
Dislike	R	R	R	R	Q

Let’s go over all the categories using all the possible answers to this question:

How would you feel if you could control your television with your voice?

and

How would you feel if you could not control your television with your voice?

The product we're investigating is the television. The feature we're surveying about is controlling it with your voice. How people perceive the television is partly determined by how they perceive the ability of controlling it with their voices.

Must-Be

Just like with the Expect and Accept answers, the Must-Be category label is the result of a mistranslation (Horton & Goers, 2019). The original Japanese name is 当り前 (“atarimae”), meaning “natural”, “obvious”.

I keep using Must-Be as the category name because it is so ingrained. Think of it as the way you should think about features in this category (while customers would call them Natural).

Features in the Must-be category are features that do not provide more value above a certain level of satisfaction. In other words, they are expected, but customers won't get happier the more these features perform above a certain threshold of performance.

Should the feature "control the television with my voice" fall into the Must-Be category, that would mean customers think it's natural to be able to do so.

Let's go over each possible combination that leads to the Must-Be category:

Feature presence ↓	Feature absence →
	Like	Expect	Neutral	Accept	Dislike
Like
Expect					M
Neutral					M
Accept					M
Dislike

Expect - Dislike

Expect means the customer thinks that what they were asked is the norm, that it is natural (“atarimae”, also the label of the resulting category), even unremarkable. No satisfaction is implied, it’s just that the customer sees the feature’s presence or absence as obvious.

A customer who answers Dislike to a feature's absence believes you have agency over the provisioning of the feature or its performance.

So when a customer indicates being able to control their TV's with their voice is only natural and dislike not being able to do so, the feature is a Must-Be feature. This feature is essential to the television. Without it, the television is not complete.

Neutral - Dislike

A customer who has no feelings about controlling the TV with their voice, but dislikes not being able to, thinks that feature is natural and normal. Although the customer attaches no value to it, they do think it is normal for it to be there.

The customer’s thinking here is that although they would not use the voice control, they would consider a television that does not have this feature inferior.

Accept - Dislike

In this case, the customer is not fond of voice control, but understands it is natural that it’s there. It can't be helped, it's outside of your control (as all TV's can be controlled by voice, for example).

What they are saying that a TV should have voice control, even if they are not too fond of it.

One-Dimensional: the more, the better

Feature presence ↓	Feature absence →
	Like	Expect	Neutral	Accept	Dislike
Like					O
Expect
Neutral
Accept
Dislike

With features in the One-Dimensional category, there is a direct link between satisfaction and feature performance.

The Like / Dislike set of answers implies that the customer believes you have agency in providing the feature.

So if the customer tells you they would like the TV to have voice control and would dislike it if that were not so (Like - Dislike), that feature is one-dimensional (“the more, the better”).

The difference with the Must-Be category is twofold:

• The customer believes you have agency over adding voice control. They believe the presence and performance of the feature depends on your willingness to invest in it;

• The better the voice control works, the more they will value the television. If they have to repeat commands frequently because the TV doesn't understand them, the perceived value of the TV drops.

Attract

Feature presence ↓	Feature absence →
	Like	Expect	Neutral	Accept	Dislike
Like		A	A	A
Expect
Neutral
Accept
Dislike

A feature that falls in the Attract category is typically a "nice-to-have" feature. Customers are pleasantly surprised, but won't think any less of the product if the feature's missing.

The customer would like being able to control the TV with their voice, but either

• thinks it is natural that the TV won't have this feature (Like - Expect), for example because it's not usual for TV's to have it;

• has no feelings about not being able to control the TV with their voice (Like - Neutral). They'd be happy if they could, but their perception of value won't change if they can't.

• thinks it is unfortunate that they would not be able to control the TV with their voice, but believes there's nothing you can do about it (Like - Accept), for example because the customer believes voice recognition is not sufficiently advanced yet. The customer would be positively surprised if they were able to control the TV with their voice.

In all of these cases, the feature is in the Attract category.

There is no direct link between performance and satisfaction for features in the Attract category. The quality of the voice recognition is not a source of more or less customer satisfaction. Simply the fact of being able to control the TV with their voice is enough for the customer to be perceive the TV as more valuable.

Indifferent

Feature presence ↓	Feature absence →
	Like	Expect	Neutral	Accept	Dislike
Like
Expect		I	I	I
Neutral		I	I	I
Accept		I	I	I
Dislike

Customers are, well, indifferent about features in the Indifferent category. Be aware that it's very possible they are indifferent because they don't see its value (yet).

Functional Expect and Dysfunctional Expect, Neutral or Accept

Understanding the Expect answer as “natural” clarifies why the combinations Expect - Expect, Expect - Neutral and Expect - Accept put the feature in the Indifferent category.

The combination Expect - Expect means a customer thinks it’s only natural for the feature to be there but it’s also natural that it is not there. This indicates the customer thinks the feature is irrelevant to her. It may be the norm to give it to her, but it also may be the norm that it isn’t. The thinking is: “This doesn’t apply to me”. If you get a lot of answers like these, it would be a good idea for you to rethink the feature or who you're surveying. Is the feature as relevant to your customers as you believe it to be?

If the customer thinks it’s natural (the norm) to be able to control a TV with their voice, but have no feelings about not being able to (Expect-Neutral), they obviously don't care about it either.

For the combination Expect - Accept, remember that both answers imply the customer believes you have no agency over adding voice control but also over not adding it. They may perhaps believe that there's a set of privacy rules that dictate whether they will can control the TV that way.

Customer satisfaction with the TV is in this case not impacted at all by the presence or absence of this feature, because the customer believes there's nothing that can be done about it.

Functional Neutral and Dysfunctional Expect, Neutral or Accept

Most Neutral combinations are self-explanatory. The feature’s category is Indifferent if the customer has no feelings about the feature's presence and:

• thinks it’s normal that the feature is absent (Neutral-Expect)

• has no feelings about it’s absence either (Neutral-Neutral)

• believes nothing can be done about its absence (Neutral-Accept)

Functional Accept and Dysfunctional Expect, Neutral or Accept

Remember: Accept means the customer believes that something can’t be helped (“shikatanai”). There is no hint of dissatisfaction, but a reluctant acceptance that things are what they are.

The feature is categorized as Indifferent when the customer reluctantly accepts that voice recognition is integrated in the TV, and

• also believes it is normal that it isn't (Accept - Expect). Customers reluctantly accept getting voice control while believing they normally should not. There's no impact on customer satisfaction; it is what it is.

• does not feel good or bad about not being able to control the TV with their voice (Accept-Neutral);

• thinks not having the feature can’t be helped either (Accept-Accept). The customer believes voice control is irrelevant to them. “Things are what they are, and I don’t know what the general expectations are." Whether voice control is possible or not has no impact whatsoever on customer satisfaction; the feature is an Indifferent one.

Reverse

Feature presence ↓	Feature absence →
	Like	Expect	Neutral	Accept	Dislike
Like
Expect	R
Neutral	R
Accept	R
Dislike	R	R	R	R

You should never build reverse category features and if you have, remove or reverse (hah) them.

A feature is categorized as Reverse when a customer dislikes its presence and either:

• likes it absence (Dislike - Like)

• expects it not to be there (Dislike - Expect)

• doesn't care if it is absent (Dislike - Neutral)

• believes you cannot prevent its absence (Dislike - Accept)

Conversely, the same applies when the customer likes a feature's absence and either

• believes it is the norm for the TV to have voice control (but doesn't want it) (Expect - Like)

• has no feelings about it (Neutral - Like)

• believes it's outside of your hands whether the feature is present, but would hate it anyway (Accept - Like)

• likes that it's absent (Dislike - Like)

A customer's satisfaction with a feature is inversely related to its presence or degree of performance. The better the feature performs, the more it will be hated.

Questionable

Feature presence ↓	Feature absence →
	Like	Expect	Neutral	Accept	Dislike
Like	Q
Expect
Neutral
Accept
Dislike					Q

By going through all categories, we've covered all possible combinations, except two:

• Customers who like a feature's presence and absence at the same time

• Customers who dislike a feature's presence and absence at the same time

It's clear that such answers make no sense. You cannot like something to be there and not to be there.

If you're getting a lot of these Questionable combinations (6% is a commonly accepted maximum), you should re-examine your survey. Customers are confused about the questions, the answers or the combination of both.