The Kano model in its essence helps understand if a feature of a product satisfies three categories: an Attractive need, a Performance need, and a Must-be need.

Categories

1. Attractive need — a "wow" feature that adds incremental satisfaction to the product.
2. Performance need — a feature that has a linear increase in satisfaction the more of it is provided.
3. Must-be need — a basic, expected feature that is taken for granted, and its absence is very dissatisfying.

The categorization happens by asking a set of two questions:

• The Functional question asks how well respondents would be satisfied by the feature. For example: "If you can purchase airline tickets online, how do you feel?" — I like it that way, I expect it this way, I am neutral, I can accept it to be that way, I dislike it that way.
• The Dysfunctional question asks how well respondents would be satisfied by the absence of the feature. For example: "If you cannot purchase airline tickets online, how do you feel?" — I like it that way, I expect it this way, I am neutral, I can accept it to be that way, I dislike it that way.

Several Kano model variants are offered by aytm, all with the goal of classifying customers into categories based on their perception of the feature's importance.

Type I

Originally termed Motivation-Hygiene (M-H) Property of Quality, this variant was introduced by Dr. Noriaki Kano in 1984.

Type III

Pouliot (1993) refined Kano's original model by introducing more precise categories, capturing more granular levels of the Attractive and Must-be needs.

Type IV

Shahin et al. (2011) further refined the Type III model by reversing the order of levels in the Attractive and Must-be needs, claiming increased accuracy and adherence to the theoretical foundation of the Kano model.

Type IIIs

A simplified version of Type III, with the omission of the Attractive and Must-be need differentiation.