How would you rate your products’ quality? Did you say ‘high quality’? Everyone says that, of course. So you start to think everything manufactured is made in Lake Wobegon, where all the kids are above average, too.
So, what does ‘high quality’ mean and is it worth saying? The short answer is we don’t know and it’s pointless to talk about. Here is the longer discussion of what is wrong:
What got me started thinking about this was Scott Dalgleish's excellent column in Quality Magazine titled
Probing the Limits: The Claim to Good Quality is Free:
"Do you know of any company that does not claim to have good quality? I can’t think of a single company that ever said, “Our quality is fair to poor.” My experience has been that very few companies deliver the good quality that they claim.
My read on this situation—to adapt a phrase from Philip Crosby—is that the claim to good quality is free—and that’s a big problem. "
The situation as he sees it:
- Claims of quality are not supported
- Management doesn’t especially care
- Consumers are cynical and care about price
First and foremost he blames his audience, quality professionals, for taking the teeth out of the ISO-9000 process. Remember when getting an ISO certificate was a bragging point about your company's quality? Today, a quick look around my industry's websites finds very little mention of certification. Scott says that ISO has become a consulting money-grab—one that documents the process, not the quality. So the quality profession has squandered their best hope for standardized quality measurement.
At a deeper level, the teethless claims of quality have dulled the buyer's senses and instead, price becomes the deciding factor. Management only follows the consumer’s interest in price, think Wal-Mart Effect or Dilbert cartoon (see
the one here for a better explanation).
Scott suggests that educating consumers and investors about the value of product quality will drive management to care. That’s an okay idea if it is done well so consumers will listen, but how much will they learn? The new Gillette razor has how many blades? We’ve been given that concrete information in a Super Bowl commercial. But the first question everyone asks is: does this really make it better? Without any worthwhile, concrete, and verifiable information on quality, buyers rely on inference and word-of-mouth, both of which are unreliable. (Hence the growth in WOM marketing, I think.)
As a marketer, we are prone to being called liars because we don’t back up claims of quality, but what I am saying here (along with Scott) is that it isn’t our fault alone. Management doesn’t’ care, the consumer is cynical, and quality pros are off on a tangent. In today's online world where marketing-speak is not tolerated, the marketer may just avoid the subject of quality and let the buyer assume that your quality meets whatever minimum standard he or she has.
Scotts point, and mine too, is that this is a systemic problem that has taken quality out of the purchasing decision in many cases. We need some of those above-average kids from Lake Wobegon to come help us fix this mess!
This is one of the rare times when I’ll ask this question and expect some answers:
Your thoughts?
