۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Customer Value Perceptions and Approaches

۳٫ Added Value, a Multidimensional Construct

۴٫ Conclusions

References

Innovation is an important competitive advantage for market success. Faster, cheaper, better are the keywords of the current competitive environment. For this to occur, products and services need to address customer needs in such a way as to fulfil what they expect but in the same time delight them through unexpected and attractive features. The theory of attractive quality uses the Kano methodology, a value components model, when thinking about product features in this way. Unfortunately, the Kano questionnaire mainly analyses customer satisfaction regarding an existing offer, thus a post purchase evaluation. In the case of new and innovative products or services, we do not have prior consumer value or a “standard” to compare it with. Therefore, we must rely on pre-purchase judgment. But what is desired customer value and with what concepts should it be associated with? The present paper aims to delimit customer value pre-purchase perception from post-purchase perception and determine the terms and key words which best represent the customer’s perspective in this situation. The ultimate goal is to present a first conceptual step into the development of an alternative to the Kano model for the design stage of innovative products and services.

Introduction

Innovation today represents a desired outcome for all corporate products and services. It guarantees that a specific offer will not become easily a commodity. We start product and service innovative design by thinking about customer requirements, what is of value for the customer. Value is the outcome of an evaluative judgement (Sánchez-Fernandez & Iniesta-Bonillo, 2006). Customers develop criteria for preference judgement due to their specific values. Understanding customer demands/needs and determining their differences seem to be the key for first time right design. According to Raharjo (2007), the cost of not having accurate voice of customer is substantially huge since it determines all the subsequent downstream processes. The interesting thing about customers is that not all product/service attributes are viewed as equally important to them; there is a non-linear relationship between performance of quality attributes and overall customer satisfaction (Lin et al, 2010). And service providers or manufacturers must understand the effects of different quality attributes in order to allocate resources to increase customer satisfaction or minimize dissatisfaction (Fynes & De Búrca, 2005).