Monday, August 6, 2012

Quality is not strategy

The problem with the word quality is that most people use it as a substitute for strategy.

Quality is the result of meeting or exceeding the expectations of your customers on the attributes they happy to pay for.

This means you have to identify your customer base, figure out what's important to them and then find out what it's worth before you can deliver quality. Thus strategy defines quality.

McDonald's provides quality in the form of convenience and price at the expense of freshness. Five Guys provides quality in the form of freshness at the expense of convenience and price.

Apple provides quality by focusing on hardware design and the ease of use of their proprietary ecosystems. Samsung provides quality by focusing on functional features like screen size and processor speed while providing access to a choice of third party ecosystems.

Quality is not a product attribute. It is the result of a successful strategy.

2 comments:

  1. Great post Harvey. I love this twist on "quality" and taking it deeper to the consumer's level. My company (along with many others) strive to "meet or beat customer expectations", but this idea really helps identify what that means. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Thanks for the comment. I appreciate knowing that I'm adding value somewhere!

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