Patent ID: 7555446

Claim:
A needs-information architecting method comprising: storing a tree-structured node net including node-identifying information for specifying nodes, merchandise features for expressing features of merchandise from prespectives of users of the merchandise, correspondences between the node-identifying information and the merchandise features, link-identifying information for linked two nodes and link-indentifying information for links joining the two nodes; outputting the node net; accepting needs including accepting seletion of any of the nodes, and accepting input of needs information expressing customer needs for the merchandise features; calculating, based on inputted needs information for the selected nodes, needs information regarding nodes for which needs information has not been input for and are located around the selected nodes, wherein each merchandise feature corresponding to each node is more specific in a proceeding to nodes in one direction of a link, wherein the needs information contains significance levels indicating how important a customer regards each merchandise feature corresponding to a node on the node net.