Delivering Two Kinds of Quality
Success starts with making products that work. But appealing to a customer's aesthetic taste is also essential in today's marketplace
This article is for subscribers only.
As I write this, the petroleum executive sitting next to me on the plane has carefully unpacked his Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones and iPod nano, which has me thinking about the meaning of quality. The Japanese actually have two words for quality -- and an understanding of each is necessary to compete today.
More than 20 years after the quality craze kicked off in the U.S. (primarily because America was getting its clock cleaned by the Japanese), quality remains an elusive target for many American companies. Not that we haven't made progress. In 1980 the average car produced by Ford (F) had twice as many product flaws (as measured by J.D. Power's survey of initial quality) as the average Japanese car.