Quality function deployment (QFD) is a wellknown method of developing customer-oriented products for satisfying customer needs (CNs). One important process of QFD is to determine importance weights of CNs. However, it is also important to estimate the future importance of CNs because of the existence of the time interval between determining importance weights of CNs and the launch of new products. In this paper, an approach based on fuzzy Markov chain and fuzzy weighted average methods is proposed to determine both present and future importance weights of CNs. A case study of a packing machine design is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.