The victory of basic features

Basic features, performance features, excitement features, insignificant features and rejection features – these five features are essential for the satisfaction of customers, users, guests etc. when they use your products or services. The categorisation of the characteristics goes back to Noriaki Kano, who already recognised in 1978 that different characteristics have different effects on the individual satisfaction of customers.

The individuality of satisfaction and the change in the categorisation of characteristics over time are two particularly interesting aspects that companies often keep in mind when developing products and services. Usually, competition for customers between manufacturers and providers is fought by means of performance and excitement features, but in recent weeks and months, basic features have increasingly come into focus. Why is that and what are the consequences?

The Kano Model in a quick run-through

Noriaki Kano worked as an educator and researcher, consultant and lecturer in quality management and, as a professor at Tokyo University, developed a customer satisfaction model – known today as the Kano Model. He recognised that improving all the characteristics of products or services does not automatically increase customer satisfaction.

He manifested the connection between the fulfilment of customer requirements and customer satisfaction by means of five characteristics:

Customers take the basic features for granted. Only when they are not present or do not function as expected do they become important and cause dissatisfaction. But if they are present and function as desired, they do not generate any additional satisfaction. Life as a basic feature is therefore quite “average”, especially because “comparable” products often come up with corresponding features.

Performance features, on the other hand, are not average. They directly influence customer satisfaction. As quality attributes, they help to differentiate products and services. If performance features are not met, customer dissatisfaction arises. If, on the other hand, they are exceeded, satisfaction increases accordingly. Interestingly, in contrast to basic features, they can be easily determined through market surveys and market observations.¹

Excitement features have a superior influence on customer satisfaction. Since they are not expected in times of relatively easy-to-replace products and services (and also almost impossible to determine through surveys), the absence of corresponding characteristics does not cause dissatisfaction, but their existence causes disproportionate enthusiasm.²

Irrelevant features lead neither to satisfaction nor to dissatisfaction, whether they are present or not. You don’t own a trailer, so why does your car need a trailer hitch? (By the way, this example can be used well to address the individuality of customer satisfaction in the next section).

Last but not least, there are rejection features. If such features exist, dissatisfaction arises immediately, but if they are “missing”, they still do not create satisfaction. Screws that rust are a good example of rejection features.

The individuality of satisfaction

In many industries and sectors, it is common to customise products and services. The self-designed sports shoe, the manual addition of ringtones on mobile phones, the procurement of individual software components instead of fully comprehensive programmes or the production of a custom made bike – nowadays it is normal even for “off the shelf” products or services that individual options increase customer satisfaction. Individuality seems to be an important human need and a good selling point.

One challenge in dealing with individuality is valuation. That people are individuals is not entirely new. Nor is the fact that people perceive and evaluate products, services and all situations they encounter individually. Someone who owns a boat will probably be happy about a trailer hitch on his car. But it is also possible that a car owner without a boat will be happy to have a trailer hitch because it offers him protection from cars that are parked “on contact”. And then there are people who don’t care at all about the existence of a trailer hitch: people without a boat and with a garage. 😉

How do product manufacturers and service providers react to this individuality? It can’t be generalised, of course, but many a manufacturer offers a basic model (with basic features) and then customises the product. Example: You cannot have all models customised by any sports shoe manufacturer. But some offer model X or Y, which customers can customise according to their wishes and ideas via an online configurator. Do all customers like that? Of course not. Not only taste is individual, but also the perception of products and services.

The shift in the perception of features

It is the rule and not the exception that the perception of features shifts. Swiping on the smartphone was a world first in 2007 and caused a lot of excitement. 15 years later, this feature interests almost no one; sometimes it even causes irritation: What happens if I, as a user, swipe downwards on the display with three fingers at the same time or swipe to the right with two fingers? The variety of possibilities does not always create enthusiasm.

In short: excitement features often turn into performance features and then into basic features. But changes in perception are also evident in the opposite direction. There are various examples of this, which make even more sense after a brief look at the present of many manufacturers and service providers.

The networked dependency

We live in a globalised and interconnected world. A world with numerous dependencies. Of course, it is easy, for example, to rail against German politics and criticise the dependence on Russian gas, but an infinite number of internationally operating companies have placed themselves in similar dependencies. The desire or even compulsion to maximise profits leads to over-optimisation of supply chains. Wire harnesses that car manufacturers import primarily from a single country, deliveries that have to be navigated by freight container through a narrow strait, cause large-scale and long-term production and delivery stoppages in the event of delivery delays. Malicious tongues might even speak of the temporary end of “just-in-time” warehousing and production!

But even if you look away from multinationals to domestic, local companies, it is easy to observe that a great many organisations that function as part of a supply chain are struggling. These companies are also interdependently networked. And the difficult thing is that they can’t change it. The baker needs flour. Flour is made from wheat. Wheat is grown and subsequently has to be transported for processing. This will always be the case. Even if baker A were to look for one or even several alternative flour suppliers, he would remain interdependently networked. And this interconnectedness – regardless of whether it is global or more local – contributes to a reverse direction in changes in the perception of features.

Basic features become performance features

Over time, performance features become basic factors – so far, so good. The other direction has also been observable for some years now: Airlines that include onboard catering in the fare are turning what used to be a basic feature – you may remember that it was common practice in the past for catering to be the rule on all domestic and international flights – into a performance feature. Why: because it is no longer the rule, but the exception. Seat reservations, which can be booked at no extra charge, become performance features. So is legroom on the plane.

So basic features are increasingly becoming performance factors – not across the board and in every industry, of course. Anyone who has ever waited 10 days for their suitcase after a flight or once booked a train ticket from Berlin to Munich without a chance of getting a seat will easily understand this. In a way, basic features are gaining importance, indeed they are becoming a competitive factor.³

More examples? How long do you want to wait for your next car? 1 year? How long do you want to wait for a new bed? 6 months? Probably not. But in many cases you have to nowadays. Availability – in itself a feature that has almost never been a factor in the selection of products or services in Central Europe in recent years – is suddenly turning from a basic to a performance feature.

And now?

Indeed, “and now?” is an interesting question. What follows from the situation described? What can companies do?

Since the vast majority of organisations are in networked dependencies: first of all, very little. A system cannot be changed quickly. Since many companies continue to earn a lot of money despite the numerous challenges in such systems and since it practically always affects all players in an industry at the same time, the pressure to change should also be manageable.

And now?

From a customer’s perspective, I can recommend that companies look more closely at the needs of their customers. What is really important to customers? Does a customer really look forward to the new car after a year of waiting, or does he just get annoyed after a certain point? From my own experience I can report: sometimes the temporary renunciation of a product of a manufacturer leads to the permanent renunciation of all products of the same kind…

From a service provider’s point of view, I can recommend paying attention to seemingly long-forgotten basic features such as availability or speed. This may even lead – at least temporarily – away from an individualisation of services (and products); certainly not always an easy decision in individual cases. On top of that, there could be a focus on binding delivery commitments, which would probably lead to fewer customers in quantitative terms, but to more satisfied customers in terms of quality overall. This can be achieved if service providers reduce the number of orders processed in parallel.

It could also be that in future the best product will not always emerge victorious from a competition, but that the manufacturer who can deliver the fastest will win. From a product manufacturer’s point of view, for example, reducing the variety of products and thus concentrating on selected products could become very interesting. In practice, such a decision is hardly based on a categorisation of product features, but it may help to increase the availability of the remaining products. And that might even excite customers….

Notes:

[1] Collecting and analysing attributes that contribute to customer satisfaction is a challenge for companies. Noriaki Kano recommends a bipolar survey using positive and negative or functional and disfunctional questions.
[2] Interestingly, companies always try to position basic features as performance or even delight features. However, an e-car manufacturer that advertises that its product is 100% electric in 2022 can hardly inspire with such a statement, since there are already many vehicles that drive 100% electrically.
[3] In the true sense of the Kano Model, basic features cannot become a competitive factor. They do not provide additional satisfaction, only their absence causes dissatisfaction. Correctly formulated: basic features become performance features. And performance features are essential for the competition of products and services.

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Michael Schenkel has published other articles on the t2informatik blog, including

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