Identification of satisfaction attributes using competitive analysis of the improvement gap

Purpose – To analyze the limitations of two methods used in the identification of satisfaction attributes in products and services – importance performance analysis (IPA) and Kano method – and to propose a new method for identification of improvement opportunities based on the competitive analysis of the improvement gap. Design/methodology/approach – A case analyzing attributes of the service “rodizio de pizzas” a kind of pizzeria found in Brazil, was used to illustrate the proposed method. Resulting from a focus group, four attributes, one of them being an innovation, were specifically chosen to include the different categories of the Kano model: basic, performance and excitement attributes. A survey was conducted with a random sample of 110 undergraduate students that eat regularly at pizzerias. Findings – As a major limitation, IPA leads to different conclusions depending on how an attribute's importance is figured. Also, it does not take into consideration the non‐linear relationship between the performance of the attributes and customer satisfaction, possibly misleading improvement decisions and hindering the introduction of innovations. The Kano method identifies the non‐linear relationship between performance and satisfaction, but it does not take into consideration the current level of attributes' performance in the analysis. The proposed method successfully identified improvement opportunities in a service case, including the possible impact of including a new attribute, i.e. an innovative attribute, overcoming limitations of the IPA and of the Kano method. Originality/value – The paper provides an intuitive and simple method that correctly identified improvement decisions in the case studied, including the introduction of an incremental innovation.