Quality: Part 2

When it comes to business success, does quality even matter?

Think about some of the biggest, best-known, longest-lived businesses in North America.

• Wal-Mart is not a quality emporium.
• McDonald's (or any fast food for that matter) will never be accused of focusing too much on the quality of their product.
  
• Coke and Pepsi are both just sugar water - as long as they don't poison anybody or bottle too many rat heads, their quality is pretty much a non-issue.
• Don't even get me started on Molson, Labatt, Budweiser, and the other big beer brands.
• Ford used to outright say that "quality is job one" even while recalling tens of thousands of vehicles every year. (Check out FordLemon.com to see what some consumers think)

Regardless, these and many brands like them are perennial market leaders.

Millions of people shop at Wal-Mart (many of them, almost exclusively). Millions of people eat at fast food chains and drink sugar water daily. More people drink a handful of the big beer brands than all the micro-brews combined. Although the major automakers always seem to be in financial trouble, they're still the big guys by a long shot...

So, do people really care about quality?

It seems like a major portion of the marketplace actually prefers low prices, convenience, selection, consistency, speed, "coolness", and other attributes far more than they care about getting something that works well.

I'm not criticizing or judging. Just an observation.

Or maybe consumers do care, but don't really have the option to go for quality. Financial realities, a busy modern life, and so on might simply make it impossible to buy the good stuff.

But in either case, why oh why are marketers so obsessed with positioning their brands with the "quality" label?

How about being a bit more honest? Don't even bring up your quality if it isn't something you should honestly be bragging about or if your customers have demonstrated it isn't a priority for them.

On the other hand, if you actually do have a quality product you have a great opportunity to expand on what "quality" means (see previous post) and capture the portion of the market that actually appreciates it.