Identifying the impact of incremental innovations on customer satisfaction using a fusion method between importance-performance analysis and Kano model

Purpose – This paper aims to present and compare a new method, improvement gap analysis (IGA), with two different versions of importance-performance analysis (IPA) – original IPA and diagonal IPA – focusing on how each method evaluates the possible impact of incremental innovations on customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – Two studies were carried out, one with users of mobile phones and another with users of a fitness centre. Mobile phone users answered questions about 24 attributes, of which six were incremental innovations at the time of the research. Users of the fitness centre answered questions about 16 attributes, of which three were incremental innovations. Findings – Both case studies show that diagonal IPA overcomes two limitations of original IPA, in terms of IPA's failure to address: the high correlation between stated importance and customer satisfaction and the non-linear relationship between attribute performance and customers’ satisfaction. However, diagonal IPA is unable to identify the possible impact of incremental innovations on customer satisfaction. Thus, IGA is formulated to overcome both the problems with original IPA and the limitation of diagonal IPA. Research limitations/implications – The new method, IGA, uses expected customer dissatisfaction as a measure of attribute relevance. Its relationship with other methods used to evaluate attribute importance should be studied in the future. Originality/value – The paper presents a new method (IGA) that is able to overcome problems of original and diagonal IPA methods and is also able to identify the possible impact of incremental innovations on customer satisfaction.