Abstract
When it comes to consumer satisfaction, there is a lack of consensus over the importance of the role of consumers in connection with the quality of services. Widely different points of view exist, ranging from a defense of consumer satisfaction as the ultimate measure of service quality, to its treatment as a commercial issue or as one that merely has to do with image. This first article (part 1 of 2, also in this issue) describes and illustrates Kano's explicative model of how consumer satisfaction behaves and briefly analyzes the main characteristics, advantages, and limitations of the different methods used to assess consumer satisfaction.