Understanding Customer Quality Requirements: Model and Application

We integrate previous work regarding service and product quality to develop and demonstrate tools useful in evaluating total product quality. Our premise is that competitive advantage can be gained through quality, even in mature commodity industries, but that a quality-based competitive strategy will be successful only if managers understand both how quality is perceived by their customers and their company’s level of quality performance. We used information from questionnaires sent to buyers of softwood dimension lumber to develop an empirical model of customer-perceived total product quality. This model and additional data from suppliers were then subjected to Importance–Performance Analysis. Respondents identified quality performance differences, based on five dimensions, between their least- and most-preferred suppliers. The dimension representing physical product characteristics was rated as the most important. Results indicate that the empirical model can be used with Importance–Performance Analysis to develop information necessary to pursue a successful quality-based competitive strategy.