An Integrated Kano–Theory and Cognitive Capital Framework for Modeling Consumer Satisfaction in Electronic Home Appliances: Unraveling Functional Performance, Awareness, and Socioeconomic Drivers

Abstract

Electronic home appliances (EHA) have become an important part of daily life, the causes of satisfaction with these products are scattered in different areas of literature, which studied the product attributes, the consumer knowledge and the demographic context separately. This study proposes and empirically tests an integrated model of Kano–cognitive capital that incorporates five product-attribute dimensions of Kano model (Must-Be, Performance, Delighter, Indifferent, and Reverse Features) with cognitive capital (customer awareness and customer education) and socioeconomic factors to model customer satisfaction with EHA in Indore City, India. The study used a structured questionnaire with 500 respondents, after data screening which resulted in 452 valid responses (381 had reliably linked appliance level satisfaction data), and Overall Product Satisfaction was measured at a respondent level (computing the satisfaction score over all appliances owned by the individual respondent), instead of one Kano sub-scale being used as a proxy measurement. Four hypotheses were tested using the Pearson correlation, independent-samples t-tests, and one-way ANOVA and multiple regression. The five Kano Model dimensions were all strongly correlated with satisfaction, with the highest being r = .632 for Performance Features, which was the only statistically significant unique predictor (β = .432) in the multivariate model (R² = .416). Satisfaction was found to be significantly related to customer education (r = .357), but not to customer awareness (r = .029), which is an experiential understanding of the product. The level of satisfaction was significantly different across gender, age and educational qualifications, but not across income level of the household. The results confirm the importance for both the appliance manufacturers and the retailers to account for both functional performance and consumer education efforts in the same explanatory framework to optimise satisfaction levels in the emerging urban Indian market.