Contribution to quality research: a literature review of Kano's model from 1998 to 2012

While many past studies focus on quality research - especially using 'Kano's model', little is known about the stream of 'Kano's model'. Begun as an effort to gauge the contribution to the field of 'Kano's model', this study reviews 94 academic articles related to Kano's model and appeared in 52 SSCI and SCI journals from 1998 to April 2012. In this study, we identified the keywords and conducted a survey to search for the related articles in the ISI Web of Science database and present our findings, such as the numbers of publications by years, categorisations of article types, key publication venues and contributors, and articles cited most. Our study showed that the amount of articles about 'Kano's model' increased from 1998 to the end of 2011, which indicates that the Kano's model's influence is an upward trend. We also find that 'Kano's model' research has fascinated a number of researchers during the 14 years covered in this study. Researchers from Asia, Africa, America and Europe have made the most contributions to this field in our findings. This study provides evidence that 'Kano's model' did attract academic researchers and contribute to the field of quality research.