But the focus in all of this is on corporate bottom lines. It is a very profit-centric view.

Businesspeople are fascinated by it, but customers could not care less. They do not make their purchasing decisions based upon whether the company is a winner or a loser in the profit sweepstakes. They are not concerned about industry rankings. They care about whether or not the company offers the kind of quality products they want. For customers, a company that offers quality products is a quality company.

Products that do not compete on quality end up having to compete on
price. Of course, price is itself a quality, but it is not as sustainable an advantage. It is not as valuable a value.

For a short period, companies seemed to be doing well with price-based appeal. Yet those years are over, and customers are today willing to pay a little extra for better quality. Quality is today a major factor in purchasing decisions.

Not surprisingly, the leading companies are the ones that anticipated this shift and worked to develop quality products. And not surprisingly, these are today's "winners" -- not because they focused on making more money but because they focused on meeting and surpassing consumer expectations.

Ueno Nobuki
Ueno Jewelry Management Institute